Aller au contenu
Répondre

New Esperanto Word - Yakult

de Alkanadi, 15 juin 2016

Messages : 16

Langue: English

Alkanadi (Voir le profil) 15 juin 2016 09:38:11

"Yakult - which means yogurt in Esperanto - was founded in 1935 in Japan." Link

First of all, no it doesn't.

Second of all, it appears that the article was edited to remove that quote. I searched online and there are others websites that say Yakult means yoghurt in Esperanto.

dbob (Voir le profil) 15 juin 2016 15:19:14

Alkanadi:I searched online and there are others websites that say Yakult means yoghurt in Esperanto.
Could you give a link?

From Wikipedia: Official claims state that the name is derived from jahurto, an Esperanto word for "yogurt"

erinja (Voir le profil) 15 juin 2016 15:35:00

Japanese has a single sound for both L and R, so these letters can be treated kind of interchangeably when bringing Western words in to Japanese. They romanized it as Yakult but it could just as easily have been romanized as Yakurt.

Yakult is "Yakuruto" (ヤクルト) in Japanese, which is nearly as close as Japanese katakana can get to "jahurto" (an older word for yogurt, today we say jogurto but jahurto is still ok), except for the use of a "ku" syllable rather than a "hu" syllable. I'm willing to forgive one missed syllable.

Vestitor (Voir le profil) 15 juin 2016 18:02:56

Yakult is a right old swizz really. It has nothing to back up its health claims. One can better just eat good yoghurt, as people have been doing for thousands of years. It's much cheaper.

nornen (Voir le profil) 15 juin 2016 18:05:04

erinja:except for the use of a "ku" syllable rather than a "hu" syllable
Except that there is no "hu" syllable in Japanese, only "ha", "he" and "ho".

ハ - [ha] - ha (romaji)
ヒ - [çi] - hi
フ - [ɸɯ̥] - fu
ヘ - [he] - he
ホ - [ho] - ho

Vestitor (Voir le profil) 15 juin 2016 18:16:13

nornen:
erinja:except for the use of a "ku" syllable rather than a "hu" syllable
Except that there is no "hu" syllable in Japanese, only "ha", "he" and "ho".

ハ - [ha] - ha (romaji)
ヒ - [çi] - hi
フ - [ɸɯ̥] - fu
ヘ - [he] - he
ホ - [ho] - ho
I think Erinja meant 'hu' in the usual pronunciation of Johurt, not that the syllable 'hu' exists in Japanese...that has become 'ku'.

nornen (Voir le profil) 15 juin 2016 18:18:49

Vestitor:
nornen:
erinja:except for the use of a "ku" syllable rather than a "hu" syllable
Except that there is no "hu" syllable in Japanese, only "ha", "he" and "ho".

ハ - [ha] - ha (romaji)
ヒ - [çi] - hi
フ - [ɸɯ̥] - fu
ヘ - [he] - he
ホ - [ho] - ho
I think Erinja meant 'hu' in the usual pronunciation of Johurt, not that the syllable 'hu' exists in Japanese...that has become 'ku'.
Thank you for pointing this out. I obviously misread.

Kristal (Voir le profil) 15 juin 2016 21:02:28

Alkanadi:I searched online and there are others websites that say Yakult means yoghurt in Esperanto.
Wait... When did Esperanto get letter "y" in its alphabet?!

erinja (Voir le profil) 15 juin 2016 21:53:06

No y in Esperanto but it's a y sound, so if a language or a transliteration system that doesn't pronounce j as "y" wants to use an Esperanto word for inspiration, I would expect them to use a y instead of a j.

Yakult was invented in the 1930's and I could easily believe that the mainstream Esperanto word for yogurt was "jahurto" and not "jogurto" at the time. The inventor of the stuff could not possibly have known that 80 years later, Esperanto speakers would be using a different word for yogurt.

Therefore, I don't see how the people looking to render "jahurto" into Japanese could have done a much better job of it. Especially since it's likely that no one knew at the time that 80 years later, we'd be pronouncing jogurto with a yo and a gu. ヨグルト, yoguruto?

Alkanadi (Voir le profil) 16 juin 2016 08:44:08

Now I see the connection. Yakult is obviously derived from Jahurto. All you have to do is:

- Drop the O (Jahurt)
- Change the J to a Y (Yahurt)
- Change the H to a K (Yakurt)
- Change the R to a L (Yakult)

Esperanto is very flexible.

Retour au début