Take an English loanword like “baseball”.
In Japanese, this comes out sounding a lot like “base-uh-bar-oo”.
Since it’s not clear what information the “uh” and the “oo” convey that simply saying “basebar” wouldn’t, why do it?
Why make everything take longer to say, to write, to hear?
Bonus: What about people who start saying a Japanese word but die before they finish the vowel?
4 comments
*We* think of the sound as being made up of a consonant and a vowel. *Native speakers* think of it as a single sound.
So why don’t you stop saying “baseball” at “baseba”? Surely you don’t *need* the “ll”…..
Katakana is an inconsistent means of rendering foreign loanwords. It’s supposed to convey the pronunciation but more often than not it’s based on the spelling. Because English is only partially phonetic, and because there are English sounds that don’t exist in Japanese, the finished article can come out quite differently from the original.
It is easier for them to pronounce it that way. That’s all. Not to mention there are plenty of Japanese words that end in ん.
Why can’t you roll your R’s? Spanish speakers worldwide can do it effortlessly, even children. Why can’t you distinguish between an aspirated and unaspirated p sound? Come on, just do it, it’s easy!
Some things just are the way they are. Japanese mora was created in a way that consonants are almost always paired with vowels. When loan words started to become a thing they weren’t going to reinvent their whole writing system.