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At least there’s a good reason behind Tokyo, since it’s meant to be Tōkyō but the diacritic was dropped because it’s hard to type. What’s their excuse for dropp
by cynix 4y ago
At least there’s a good reason behind Tokyo, since it’s meant to be Tōkyō but the diacritic was dropped because it’s hard to type. What’s their excuse for dropping a perfectly typable i?
- pessimizer 4y agoBecause double "i"s don't mean anything in English orthography, and at best serve as reminders of a sound you've heard somewhere else? The name for that mushroom is not from a Roman script. It is translated into one in various ways, official and unofficial, devised by arbitrary missionaries. Once it becomes an English word, it's nice if it is respelled in a way that we can easily pronounce, although it's against our nature as Americans not to just leave it obscure and look down on people who aren't in the know. British people will happily mangle a word to make it an English word, especially if it's French, but they really should be tried for what they do to the word "jaguar." Americans are more insecure, I guess, due to youth.
- comradesmith 4y agoIsn’t that the same justification for Shitake vs Shiitake? In Japanese it would be kanji or occasionally hiragana, some transliterations will be imperfect, and so long as the authors intent is clear, to me that’s all that matters