I have found Roger Pulvers' articles on foreign words in the Japanese language both enlightening and fascinating. Having been stationed in Japan repeatedly for many years as a U.S. Marine Corps officer, I fell in love with the country. Being a longtime student of Japan and Japanese, I have often wondered about the official process by which foreign words are integrated into the language, or rather how the kana pronunciations come about.
Is there an office in some ministry that decides? Isn't a native speaker consulted? The word "propane" comes to mind. In English, the "a" is pronounced as a long vowel and the English pronunciation could easily be written in katakana. Yet in the "official" written katakana version, the "a" is pronounced as in "all." Curious minds want to know about these things.
I find it humorous, too, that the younger generations often don't realize that common Japanese words are actually of foreign origin. Take "hotchkiss," for example. Many younger Japanese know the word simply as the Japanese word for stapler, not realizing that it is actually the name of an American company that made staplers. Most languages are polyglot mixtures to a lesser or greater extent, but I find Japanese to be a particularly interesting one.
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