17 ms·

> hence the username 'nekojima', Japanese for 'cat island'. It's actually 'shima' for island. Not sure if 'jima' works too, but shima is definitely more common

• Someone 15y ago
  Iwo Jima, according to Wikipedia, is "Sulphur Island", so I would guess that either Iwo or Jima is OK, too.
• alttag 15y ago
  The 'ji' (じ) uses the same kana as 'shi'　(し), just with some tick marks. Which sound is used in a compound word depends on the previous syllable. So, by itself, yes, it's "shima", but in a compound it could be either.
• dschaab 15y ago
  (insert obligatory off-topic warning here) > It's actually 'shima' for island. Not sure if 'jima' works too, but shima is definitely more common. Correct, "island" is shima, but in this case we have a phenomenon in Japanese known as "sequential voicing" (連濁, rendaku) in which the first syllable of the second word of a compound is changed from an unvoiced consonant to a voiced consonant. This is particularly common when dealing with native Japanese compounds; i.e., compounds using words not derived from the imported Chinese pronunciations of characters. So "island" (島) by itself would be shima, but when used as a suffix, the initial consonant sh becomes voiced to j, and thus jima. Another example is "fire" (火), pronounced hi alone, but voiced to bi as the second half of words such as "fireworks" (花火, hanabi).