[Zgarbas]

So I was writing a lang-8 that was filled with names, and got increasingly annoyed by my having to write with wikipedia open (searching the term in English, then going to the Japanese equivalent page if it had one). Basically, I'm having a very hard time figuring out what the established katakana writing for most names are (e.g. カエサル、クレオパトラ、ファラオ）、and since usually the katakana spelling is different from what I'd picture it being I always have to look it up.

Are there any set rules for katakanization? Should I just go by ear since most people would understand from context what I mean by, say クレオパトラ、エジプトのファロー）, or should I start just memorizing the established terms&names? These particular examples are pretty intuitive, but stuff like ギリシャ、ルーマニア、バンゴッホ really confuse me, and since I don't know which words are intuitive and which are not until I see them, I spend lots of time using a dictionary just to check.

There are fairly fixed rules about foreign words -> katakana; the problem with names like the ones you're listing is that they're often (but not always) based on the original Greek, Latin, Hebrew, etc. pronunciation rather than the way they're pronounced in English.

There may be fixed rules about foreign words --> katakana these days... but that doesn't help with all the words that received stuuuuupid katakana in the past. To me there seems to be no consistency between when katakana are chosen to match the words pronunciation as closely as possible (this makes sense) or when katakana are chosen based on the original word's spelling (this makes no sense at all)...

Well, it's stupid for foreigners who already speak the language the word came from. But it makes no difference to the Japanese what rules (if any) "katakanization" follows, since they learn each word from scratch anyway, they don't translate from another language. They just need them to be as easy to pronounce as possible.

And, of course, Japanese is not meant to accommodate foreigners, it's meant to accommodate natives.

As always, students of Japanese have two options:
1. toil over a dictionary all day, to write stuff you can't really write
2. don't try to produce Japanese text that contains large amounts of words you haven't learned yet, rely on input to become familiar with them instead

I would suggest the second. Imported words are especially convenient to read, because you can usually recognize them the first time you see them.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Well, it's stupid for foreigners who already speak the language the word came from. But it makes no difference to the Japanese what rules (if any) "katakanization" follows, since they learn each word from scratch anyway, they don't translate from another language.

The words get taken from the foreign language at some point, they don't just materialize out of nowhere "from scratch".

From the introduction to "Easy Katakana, How to Read English Loanwords in Japanese" by Tina Wells & Aoi Yokouchi:

"...not all gairaigo spellings have been standardized. This is especially true with names. Don't be surprised if three different people spell your name three different, but similar ways. Choose or create a spelling you think comes closest to the sounds in your name, and use it."

[Zgarbas]

Stansfield123 Wrote:2. don't try to produce Japanese text that contains large amounts of words you haven't learned yet, rely on input to become familiar with them instead

I would suggest the second. Imported words are especially convenient to read, because you can usually recognize them the first time you see them.

Oh, 99% of the time katakana words are instantly recognizable, don't get me wrong (sometimes I say them out loud to get it, but still), it's the production that kills me. The fact that they're so easily recognizable makes it even more difficult to produce, since I don't have to think twice about it, then I want to use the word myself and... blank. I even get my own country's name wrong because I keep thinking of it as Ro-ma-ni-a, not Ru- - - ma - ni - a.

Hi!

There's a set of rules in DoIJG starting from page 615, although I find it easier to learn the katakana loan words than memorizing and confidently using those rules.