today I learned that ビップ (bippu) which is VIP is pronounced the same way as English

I thought it would be pronounced like the phonetic spelling like “beep – oooo” but it’s still pronounced V I P.

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising, but this is probably the first time I’ve run into a loan word where it’s using the katakana spelling with the English pronunciation. Are there many other loan words like this?

4 comments
  1. I’ve definitely heard it pronounced like “bippu” so I imagine it depends on context. Where did you hear it pronounced VIP? (Was it ビー アイ ピー?)

  2. It’s not all that common that VIP is pronounced as a word in English. I certainly do not and never have.

    Also in my part of the world, vip is already a word than the abbreviation of Very Inchiki Potato, but that’s probably not the case outside of industry jargon.

    What you are hearing in Japanese (or more correctly not hearing!) is the devoicing of final -U which happens so regularly as to be forgotten by native speakers. It takes some pointing out to get Japanese native speakers to even notice that they do not say final u in many words, as it is so common.

    dess daijob, etc

  3. ビップ is pronounced ‘bippu’.

    ヴィップ is an approximation of the English pronunciation, with the slight alteration that the V is off (Neither f nor v natively exist in Japanese, so a close approximate is used)

    VIP can be pronounced V.I.P ***when written as such***. When written using katakana, it will usually be pronounced as written, because that’s what a syllabary *is*.

  4. Sometimes furigana will not be valid readings of the actual word, but instead will offer additional information. If you saw VIP in furigana next to ビップ then that is probably what’s going on here.

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