Технік-радіольщик Мокроголовенко (hector_von_kyiv) wrote in linguaphiles,
Технік-радіольщик Мокроголовенко
hector_von_kyiv
linguaphiles
  • Mood: confused

stress in Japanese names

People often ask me how they should stress Japanese names (proper names, in particular). When I start explaining that Japanese language knows not such thing as word stress, they are not satisfied and go on asking: "But there must be a way to adapt names to other languages that do have word stress. How should one pronounce Takeshi or Naruto in terms of stress?"
I don't know how to explain it. It seems, that with Takeshi and Naruto, for instance (both in English and Ukrainian) second syllable is stressed. However, with "samurai" it is the last syllable in Ukrainian and the first one in English (with a secondary stress at the last one according to Collins dictionary). And if we take "Hiroshima" and "Nagasaki", it gets even more complex.

So the question is: is there any kind pattern for that?
Tags: japanese, phonetics, stress
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  • Are these symbols Korean or Japanese?

    This was in the garage of a house we moved into. The previous owner had been stationed in Korea and had visited Japan. Would anybody know what…

  • 諦める and 諦めがつく

    Is there a difference between 諦める and 諦めがつく?

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