2026-09-08 13:30 UTC
That’s pretty close, though!
The thing is, the Japanese language has very few sounds compared to most languages, so their loan words have to be forced into the system of sounds they have.
For «hamburger» specifically, they don’t have any of the vowel sounds in the English word. They also lack the rhotic «r» sound, or really any «r» sound at all (edit: that is similar to the languages they loan words from). Their «a» sound is an open sound as in «say aah», so they just ended up using a long version of it to approximate the «ur» and «er» sounds (which are really similar in American English!).
Replies (2)
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@wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2026-09-09 00:58
They totally have «r» sounds. らりるれろ or ラリルレロ 「ランチ」、「りょうり」、その他。
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@Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 2026-09-09 06:53
They do have an R if i remember correctly, it’s just that’s very similiar to an L to most learners due to their mother language, that’s also why Italians have it a little bit easier since we do use the same sound to make some words (we still have problems hearing it correctly because they way japanese uses it is very different and our brain gets tricked in to hearing an L instead of an R but we can make the sound with little to no practice xompared to French or British people)