Here are some more details if anyone is interested. I learnt a tiny bit of
Japanese after travelling there for RubyKaigi in Aug/Sep.
The text is in a character set called Katakana. Katakana and Hiragana are
both phonetic character sets, which means each character has exactly one
syllable that it always represents. It also means that a given word has a
strict 1-to-1 mapping between its pronunciation and the way it's written.
This is pretty powerful, because you can reliably pronounce anything you see
written in Hiragana or Katakana, and vice versa.
(In Japan, almost all writing has Kanji interspersed, which is far more
complex (the standard set is ~ 1800 characters, and they have meanings
instead of pronunciations; they're only pronounceable when they're combined
in context). But, it's a good start to be able to read the phonetic stuff.
The two sets have an equivalent set of symbols and phonetically anything
said in one can be said in the other. The difference is that Hiragana is for
Japanese words, and Katakana is for things that are imported (in practise,
mainly English). Hence, "email", "McDonalds" and "Capybara" are all written
in Katakana because they're all things that didn't originate in Japan. The
nice thing is that once you learn how the pronunciations map across, you can
"read" Katakana as English.
Capybara is written as カピバラ:
カ ― ka
ピ ― pi
バ ― ba
ラ ― ra
The same syllables could be written in Hiragana as かぴばら, but that wouldn't
have any meaning because it's not a Japanese word.
Some other examples of Katatana (the dash ー means the preceding syllable is
drawn out longer)
ツイート : tsu ii to ("tweet")
スライドショー : su ra ii do sho ("slideshow")
メルボルン、オーストラリア : me ru bo ru nn, oo su to ra ri a (Melbourne, Australia)
ベン ホスキングス : be nn ho su ki nn gu su (Ben Hoskings)
It's a pretty cool language :)
―Ben
On 29 November 2010 13:16, Josh Price <[email protected]> wrote:
> It is and says Capybara.
>
> The fan club lives here:
>
> http://www.facebook.com/pages/kapibarasan-Kapibara-San/49825139716
>
> On 29/11/2010, at 1:13 PM, Daryl Manning wrote:
>
> > Just curious if it was anything... assumed it was Japanese on the front
> of it, but realized it could be the reverse of "Engrish" transliterations.
> And what i that on the front? A capybara?
> >
> > Inquiring minds have asked and I came up wanting... =]
> >
> > ciao !
> > Daryl.
> >
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group.
> > To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> [email protected]<rails-oceania%[email protected]>
> .
> > For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group.
> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> [email protected]<rails-oceania%[email protected]>
> .
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
>
>
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby
or Rails Oceania" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
