Katakana

I found out that Katakana words are oftentimes similar to the English words in terms of how they sound when read out loud. For instance, the word アメリカ has exactly four syllables like the original English word, America. Similarly, カメラ also has three syllables and sounds almost perfectly the same as the original word, camera. However, I discovered that a lot of the words come with small and big variations of changes.

First of all, I found that the words that added another syllable. Katakana expression of ketchup is ケチャップ , pronounced as ke-chya-ppu. In English or in Korean, ketchup has only two syllables while the Katakana expression has three, as the 'p' part is pronounced as 'ppu'. Similarly, ホテル, an expression for hotel, has an additional syllable.

Another interesting finding is that some words have way more syllables than they originally have when expressed in Katakana. An example of this is the Katakana expression for Christmas, which is クリスマス. While Christmas has only two syllables in English, once written in Katakana, it has five syllables. This pattern was commonly seen in people's names, like Smith (スミス), Alfred Hitchcock (アルフレッド・ヒッチコック), and Donald Trump (ドナルド・トランプ). It was also surprising to see how Japanese and Korean languages share so many similarities since these expressions are pronounced the same way, with added syllables, once read in Korean.