Sorry to bring this up during the Nihon Series, but . . .

Huh? Y, Yankees?

I wrote like "Yankees(zu in katakana)" in my previous message and some people kindly pointed me out like "Hey, what are you saying Hikaru-chan, that should be spelled 'Yankees(su).'"

Are you serious? (@_@ ; )

Does anyone know why it should be?? I mean, usually we pronounce it as "Yankee'z'" . . . the last "s" of the team name stands for the plural, so it's pronounced "z."(basically, except the cases like if the word ends with "t," the "s" attached is pronounced "ts(tsu).")

Wonder if it's because the team proposed to write it so in Japan? Or maybe they preferred "su(s)" because it reminds us something like the roughnecks' hangout if written as "Yankeezu" in Japanese? (lol)

This is where I started to wonder what other teams are written in katakana . . .

Maarinzu(Marlins)?? Dojaasu(Dodgers)?? Cardinarusu(Cardinals)?? Zu? . . . those are all I can remember right now. Perhaps it goes like, the team names which have "n" right before the last "s" are written as "-zu" and others as "-su"??

The mechanism of Japanese pronunciation is fairly detailed, right? For example, the same "n" has two syllables, "m"-ish one and "n"-ish one, like "Gan(m)baru(=to hold on)" and "Ton(n)garu(=to get sharp)."

Whether to write this "s" - which is pronounced same as "z" - as "SU" or "ZU," is also a part of adapting borrowed words or proper nouns to the appropriate pronunciations as Japanese when their katakana spellings are chosen, you see. It may be sensuously hard to pronounce "ZU" right after the stretched sounds like DojAAsu or YankEEsu.

Then how about music?? Let's check out the katakana spellings of overseas bands!

Biitoru . . . zu(Beatles)??
Venchaa . . . su(Ventures)?? No that's Venchaazu, isn't it?

. . . it's random, after all? (lol) Yes! Cause we see it as the Nihon Sirii"ZU"(Series)!! I see, it's because the "Nihon SiriiSU" doesn't look so cool . . . "Siriisu" still looks/sounds suck, anyway . . .

So are their katakana chosen by how it just feels??


Hm . . . this makes me anxious but how can I examine it further? (lol)


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(NOTES by Nuuk)
"the Nihon Series" ... Japan's professional baseball version of MLB World Series.
"Yankee" ... in Japanese it also means juvenile delinquents, besides its original meaning.