Topic: To Loveã‚‹ the answer

[UruseiNeo]

"The title, when written in Japanese hiragana as (とらぶる, Toraburu?) translates to "trouble"."

Sorry but that's technically not true. Foreign words, such as english words like "trouble," are wirtten with Katakana NOT Hiragana. For it to be correct, the title would have to be written in Japanese Katakana: (トラブル) but that contradicts the ending "る" of the original title.

[sidzero]

Doesn't mean they couldn't have done it anyway, you know. Part of the whole "word play" thing.

[UruseiNeo]

I'm just saying that for it to translate to "trouble" it would have to be full katakana.

[sidzero]

You know, that reminds me of a thought experiment we did in one of my psychology classes once upon a time.

Look at the following word, and think "how do you pronounce this?"

GHOTI


The answer, surprisingly enough, is that it's pronounced like "Fish".

GH is pronounced like the GH in laugh, an "f" sound.
O is pronounced like the O in lemon, what's called a "schwa" (É™ if you want to get into phoenetics).
TI is pronounced like the TI in action, a "sh" sound.

Now, if we can do such things as this in English, why couldn't someone do the same in Japanese. I would think it would be much simpler in Japanese, because you could so something as simple as spelling something that should be in Katakana in Hiragana instead.

[UruseiNeo]

that contradicts the point of having katakana. It's different with English cause we're so screwed up in how we pronounce our own words.

But with Japanese, Hiragana is for Japanese words (such as sushi) while Katakana is for borrowed words (such as Ramen, which is chinese).

To write a borrow/foreign word in Hiragana would be to say that this word is of Japanese origin.

[sidzero]

Or to just screw with people.

[veehive]

Or just to screw with their own language. Artistic License and all that.