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I’m currently looking up Vocal halfway through Season 1. There’s explanations on how to use jisho.org that are outdated. I’ve tried to use the new site, but I’m stuck. My passion is photography, so I looked up ‘lens’ and get ‘レンズ’ which is in katakana and not hiragana. I can put this in column two but I have no idea what to put in column three? Any help appreciated. Thanks.
I decided to skip words that were foreign / katakana words for now – they’re still on my list but I don’t have romaji or hiragana for them. In the next section, we are given a katakana lookup sheet, so I did a direct translation and レンズ is れんず. Then I moved onto ソフトウェア -> そふとうえあ . . . all good, until I try Computer コンピュータ which has a ー in it. I’m not sure what this is but from the pronunciation, it sounds like a small つ. So should I write こんぴゅつた?
My last theory about katakana ー = hiragana small つ is probably wrong and now I’m stuck. I discovered this with filter which is フィルター and there’s nothing after the ー. So I’m now guessing it means it’s a long vowel? Should フィルター be ふいるたあ and computer こんぴゅうた
Yep, katakana ー = extended vowel. ター = たあ, though you’d often just write it as たー anyway. For example, “ramen” in Japanese is ラーメン, but you’ll often see it written らーめん as well. The small っ in katakana is the same, only in katakana: ッ.
You’ll tend to find a lot of technical terms are foreign loanwords. =)
And yeah, I’m not a huge fan of Jisho’s current layout…
Tiny side note, ソフトウェア transliterates to そふとうぇあ – note the small ぇ. ～うえあ has a slightly different pronunciation (though to be fair, it’s an equally valid way of writing it). フィルター to ふぃるたー as well. Note ふい = “fui” but ふぃ = “fi”. There’s a bunch of extra combinations and glides which exist only in katakana to cover all sorts of weird foreign pronunciations.
Thanks Joel, a big help.
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