The Four Essential Travel Phrases

The Four Essential Travel Phrases Web site is an amusing site that translates the following questions into hundreds of languages and dialects.

1) Where is my room?
2) Where is the beach?
3) Where is the bar?
4) Don’t touch me there!

It even has pop-culture versions and English transliterated into other languages’ writing systems.

I must point out, though, that the English as transliterated into the Japanese katakana syllabary has errors. I’ll use doubled vowels for long vowels:

1) Where is my room?

ヱルイスマイルーム？ to ウェアイズマイルーム？

Weru isu mai ruumu? to Wea izu mai ruumu?

2) Where is the beach?

ヱルイスザービーチ？ to ウェアイズザビーチ？

Weru isu zaa biichi? to Wea izu za biichi?

3) Where is the bar?

ヱルイスザーバール？ to ウェアイズザバー？

Weru isu zaa baaru? to Wea izu za baa?

4) Don’t touch me there!

ドーントタッチミーゼル！ to ドントタッチミーゼア！

Doonto tatchi mii zeru! [katakana says "Donto"] to Donto tatchi mii zea!

1. You can’t use katakana ヱ (we). The Japanese language lost that sound centuries ago when the sound we merged with エ (e). The spellings, however, weren’t modernized until just after World War II. More recently, for foreign words with we, Japanese has ウェ (u with a small e).
2. Japanese tends to use British “r-lessness” after vowels (where, there, bar).
3. The word is has a voiced /z/.
4. The word the has a short vowel (ザ za). (Before a vowel in English (the artist), the is pronounced “thee” instead of “thuh.” In Japanese this is ジ (ji) because z- becomes j- before -i, but it is still written zi in some romanization systems.)

See also Omniglot’s:

• Japanese Katakana
• Translations of Useful Phrases in Many Languages