I believe this article could use a substantial rewrite. It says that the variations in spelling are usually do to transliteration issues, but not from the using different transliteration schemes. WTF?
Also:
*What are "Drama between vowels" and "unique-cipher dropping?"
*"Americans drop extra vowels?" Does this refer to the "u" in British spellings of "hono(u)r" and "colo(u)r?"
*The article says English has many rules for spelling. Well, every language has rules for spelling. English is just more irregular than most European languages.
*Japanese does not use an alphabet. The kana are '''syllabaries'''.
*Japanese is hardly vowel-heavy. It has fewer vowel sounds than English does.
May I suggest that the article actually include some of the points of confusion? Such as the Japanese R, R only before vowels, Japanese not having V or TH, vowel elision, multiple ways of indicating long vowels, difference between Halpern and Kunrei, etc.
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ILP: "Ah My Goddess: the names of Belldandy, Skuld and Urd come from three Norse goddesses: Verthandi, Skuld and Urth. The videogame Freelancer does a Shout Out to this series by naming three battleships like the Norse goddesses."
Citation please. Freelancer is a ''Western'' space sim, are we supposed to believe that such a thing would contain a shout out to a ''Japanese'' manga series that has precisely zero relation to any aspect of the plot? Is it not more likely that the battleships were named thus simply because they were part of Norse mythology, just like how many other Rhineland ships, such as RNS Loki, were named?
Put another way, are we supposed to believe that the main character from Hellsing is a shout out to a song by British band Gentle Giant?
I'm removing the Freelancer reference because I don't feel it's correct (as you've probably guessed). Put it back in if you actually have some kind of source
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Xenon: Can we agree to ditch every single plain jane L/R and B/V reference in this trope? Japanese has no L or V (though R is often pronounced like some mismash of L and R), and hence, nothing is wrong or right in that particular instance. There are exceptions, of course, like when they're obviously going for some reference that only works with one way. But I gotta say it's annoying seeing all these "It's Vick but it's supposed to be Bick!" references.
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-Z- : In all fairness, even Banpresto can't decide on Zengar's name. Different artbooks spell it differently from one another... But this is the first place I've seen his surname spelled with an A.
I've adopted a rule of going with what the script says instead of the Official References; the voice actors seem to know what they're saying a lot more than the production teams do. Especially since the japanese language is so literal about vowels; I suspect noone at Banpresto knows that "Sänger" and "ゼンガー" do not sound alike. Let's also note their fall aparts when romanizing their own language; The artbooks have repeately had erroneous Ws strewn about in ship names, as an example.
I extend this to any non-l/r hiccup based disputes with name transliteration. Nanoha is a big source of these things.
Nerem: Actually, "Sanger" and "whatyoutypedbutIcan'tbutfanonizedasZengar" DO sound exactly alike. As a German speaker, I can confirm it. However, where have you seen it spelled any as anything but 'Sanger', as even @2 had it spelled like that.
Xenon: Seriously, go play Alpha 2, when the characters are initially shown, his name is clearly spelled out as Sanger. I've n
ever seen an official source use the romanized "Zengar", only in Katakana (which is only pronunciation)
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{{Darmok}}: The movie ''The Pope Must Die'' (also called ''The Pope Must Diet'' in the US) uses a similar concept. Robbie Coltraine's character, Father Albinizi, is made pope because of an error caused in writing down "Father Albini". The priest transcribing the name was hard of hearing and misheard "I said 'i'" for "i-z-i".
{{Ununnilium}}: Merged the two segments, because the examples for each are now helplessly entangled.
Boobah: Pulled: "Inversion: In Bleach, Yasutora Sado insists that his name be pronounced with an S even if the speaker is capable of pronouncing "Chad", in honor of his Japanese heritage (the other half being Mexican)."
Because his name ''is'' Sado; the first character in his name can be pronounced either way. Ichigo misreads it, thinks that "Chado" is [[RuleOfCool cooler]] and makes it his nickname for Sado. Most of the boys in their class pick it up. Orihime and Uryuu in particular always refer to him as Sado.
--> When Inu Yasha was dubbed in English, the fan spelling of "Kirara" was replaced by the verbally awkward "Kilala".
HarpieSiren: Despite the fact that it's ''pronounced'' Kilala, Kirara is still how it's ''spelled'', as evidinced by the English title for episode 91, "Suspicious Faith Healer & the Black Kirara" and 97, "Kirara Come Home" . Weird, huh?
{{Burai}}: "Kilala" is considered more verbally awkward than "Kirara"? Huh. Is this a problem I'm spared for speaking Peorian? :)
{{Scrounge}}: I'm with Burai here, though honestly neither one exactly rolls off the tongue. I'd have made it Kirala, but no one ever asked me.
ShayGuy: What, no mention of Tessa from FullMetalPanic? Teresa/Teletha?
DaibhidC: Would KingArthur characters such as Guenevere/Guinevere/Gwynhwyfar, Lancelot/Launcelot, Mordred/Modred/Medraut qualify this as one of TheOldestOnesInTheBook (not to mention [[{{Shakespeare}} William Shaxper]])?
Caphi: Who says the Tales main character's name is Cress? I have a screenshot of the PSX version of Tales of Phantasia that clearly says "Cless Alvein" in romaji, kthx.
{{Tanto}}: The official GBA translation, by Nintendo, uses "Cress". (And "Burklight" and "Claude".)
Caphi: The official GBA translation, by Nintendo, also gives the name of the climactic battle between gods and demons as "Kangaroo," and cites Pluto in-battle as "Brute." Oh, and Tales is made by Namco, not Nintendo.
{{Tanto}}: Nonetheless, that's the WordOfGod, and the FanTranslation names are just {{fanon}} at this point. Whining about it isn't going to make it go away. And I'm well aware that Tales is made by Namco, but Nintendo did the localization for the GBA port.
{{DomaDoma}}: Not in the fandom, but I'm pretty sure the PSX translation counts for something.
{{Charred Knight}}: R and L can be used interchangably in Japan, and the Japanese are notorious for Engrish phrases. After checking wikipedia it shows this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_cress which seems to indicate that its supposed to be a pun. To make matters more complicated Tales of phantasia was developed by Wolf Team and not Namco.
Caphi: I'm not talking about the DeJap translation. I'm talking about Romaji clearly seen in the credits for the Japanese PSX remake. I'm not so stupid as to mistake DeJap for final word. I can provide a screenshot if you like. It says, quite clearly, "Cless Alvein."
Nezumi: "Official" is not the same thing as ''correct''. I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who ''seriously'' thinks that the name of the Star Ocean 2 male lead was intended to be "Crawd", rather than "Claude", or that a certain Front Mission 3 character was intended to be "Blenda", as listed in the JP manual... but those ''are'' the most official names for them.
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{{arromdee}}: Took out the mention that Asimov's title is explained in Wikipedia. We really don't need to reference things here, and the Wikipedia reference was obviously added because someone thought it was a neat story but wasn't completely sure, so they blamed it on Wikipedia. I was an Asimov fan as a kid and heard of the story long before Wikipedia; Asimov mentioned it somewhere in his own works (I bet you can find it in his autobiography or some other non-Googleable place.)
Does this trope also include the tendency of many Asians to add extra vowels to european words, in order to break up strenuous (to them) european consonent clusters? Easy example from Neon Genesis Evangelion: Shinji attempting to return Asuka's "Guten morgen" and coming up with "morugen".
DrDedman: It's the nature of the language. Japanese is made up 5 "lone" vowels (a,e,i,o,u with no "long" pronunciation) 1 consonant "n" and about 40 consonant plus vowel "clusters" (ra, sa, ta, etc). There is literally no way to make an ending "r" sound. Thus Shinji rolls the "r" to a "ru". The German has 2 sylables, put into Japanese it would have 4 equally-weighted "mora". Thus "mo-ru-ge-n".
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TheKakapo: I've never really understood why the "r" in Japanese is translated so slavishly to either "r" or "l" in English, given that more often than not, it sounds much more like the English (actuually, closer to the Spanish equivalent) sound "d" than "r," especially in the middle of words. Like "Kitara" would sound much closer to "Kitada" than "Kitara" or "Kitala" in English. I mean, I know the whole language is like that, but... they don't even make the American r sound! Why bother!
AnonymousMcCartneyfan: For the sake of speakers of British English, who might also want the English-language copies? Their "r"'s often don't sound like American "r"'s either (no one else's "r"s do), but they are definitely "r"s to them!
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DonQuigleone: anyone considered that this trope is just as much to do with the fact that English has no consistent spelling system? The 40 sounds of the English language can be spelled in something like 10000 different ways, this stands in contrast to other languages (like korean) which have a 1:1 basis most of the time, I added it in on the main page, if anyone can improve it please do
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{{Rebochan}}: I must say, I never thought I'd be writing this much about Sailor Moon's etymology again. I hope it hasn't gone into natter territory.
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{{Servbot}}: Removed...
** Mitigated by the fact that it really, ''really'' sounds like Raging Heart. And is spelled:レイジングハート. Reijingu Haato.
Okay, Japanese lesson 101. ジ is the character used for "ji" ''and'' "zi". So it is ''also'' read as Reizingu Haato, which is how the Japanese pronounce Raising Heart (remember, Japanese has no "si", they only have a "shi").
{{Tyrfing}}: I see... the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#Table_of_katakana list I was using to check]] had "Zi" as ズィ. My sister has a Japanese text book, for some reason, I probably should have checked that instead. I'm listening to Nanoha say it now and I still think it sounds like Raging Heart (comparing it to when Fate yells "Thunder Rage" or whatever it was in season one).
If ジ is both ji and zi why is it ''definitely'' Raising Heart? Is there some source I’m unaware of (granted I’m not aware of much it seems)? Where is it "clearly and consistently" labelled Raising Heart?
Has anyone ever considered that it might be [[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/raze Razeing Heart?]] Because [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SoYeah you know...]] ;-)
{{Servbot}}: Well, for one thing, every time it's spelled in English (DVD Notes, Opening, ID Cards, etc), it's always spelled as Raising. And remember, Raising Heart was not always the WaveMotionGun we know and love. Once upon a time, in an omake of TriangleHeart3SweetSongsForever that [[AdaptationDisplacement most Nanoha fans doesn't know exists]], [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_RBghAfiW8 Raising Heart looked like this]].
{{Sgamer82}}: For what it's worth, the recently released English-dubbed DVDs use "Raging Heart", both in-dub and in-subtitles.
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{{djkates}}: Just saw {{arromdee}}'s edit on the whole "Hebrew Name of God" thing, and I'm confused. Not saying he's wrong or anything, but the way I learned it in Hebrew school was "always read it as Adonai", and the few times I've seen it with vowels at all, it's always been the ones for Adonai. Elohim is fairly often used to refer to God, but any time I've seen that, Elohim's always been spelled out (aleph-lamed-hay-yud-mem, if you're wondering). 'Course, part of it is simply that this particular (sub?) example has gotten pretty long, and I'm tempted to simply trim it to saying that there's no correct Hebrew pronunciation of yud-hay-vav-hay and ending it there.
LATER: Trimmed the example. Not that the additional material was uninteresting or anything, but the example itself is barely within scope, and most of the info is of interest only if you're Jewish or a linguist.
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Prfnoff: This is an interesting note, but "differences in romanization systems" account for the discrepancy, since Hepburn uses "zu" rather than "dzu":
* The bespectacled [[OjamajoDoremi orange Ojamajo]] has always been fansubbed as Hadzuki (to take account that the 2nd hiragana in her name is a "tsu" with a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakuten dakuten]] on it), but most other sources will write it as Hazuki.
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{{Rebochan}}: I took the image down because it didn't have anything to do with the page except trying to add fire to the flaming on one of the entries. It doesn't even spell her name with an S, sigh. Anyone got a good image of, say, multiple spellings of a character's name? Or someone ''actually'' demanding to have their name spelled differently?
:Ketsuban: Bah, killjoy. I say screw the sense-of-humour-bypass-patients and put the image back up - it was relevant to the article and amusing.
{{Rebochan}}: No, it wasn't. Glad to see you're up for discussing this maturely.