Mika Tuupola wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Apr 2001, Paul Bryan Lester wrote:
> > In my last Japanese lesson I came
> > across the word Keitai in a document and
> > asked about it, because it wasn't referring to
> > mobile phones.
In the unlikely event that nobody else answered you yet, this is
because "keitai" just means "portable".
> I've also seen it written as "ketai". Is there any difference
> in meaning of the words "keitai" and "ketai" or is it just
> a different way of writing it?
<pedant> The only way to write The Word is 携帯, anything else is
just a bastardized transcription by uncivilized barbarians... </pedant>
With traditional Japanese orthography, the pronunciation of the two
kanji above would be rendered with the hiragana syllables けいたい,
ke/i/ta/i, hence the transcription "keitai". However, phones being
trendy and all that, the word is often written in katakana as ケータイ,
ke/-/ta/i, since katakana uses dashes to indicate a long vowels.
And when katakana are converted to Roman letters dashes are usually left
out, leaving behind "ketai".
So it's the same word, just written differently. And no matter how
you spell it -- I prefer 'keitai' myself -- it should be pronounced
kee-tai. Confused yet? 8)
Cheers,
--
Jani PATOKALLIO / jpatokal@iki.fi / +81 90 7722 3557
Sanpo Laboratory, Mechano-Informatics Dept., University of Tokyo
ヤニ・パトカリオ / jani@sanpo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp / 090 7722 3557
東京大学、工学系研究科、機械情報工学科、算法設計研究室
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Fri Apr 6 06:24:33 2001