How did “penguin” end up as “pengin” and not “penguin”?

11 comments

1. Less Syllables = Easier to say.

2. gui as is pronounced ~~in French~~ sounds gi to most Japanese, so maybe that

3. The w sound in English is difficult for native Japanese speakers to pronounce. Since phonetically, it is not pronounced pen-gu-in it’s spelled how it sounds peng-win or pen-gwen (depending on your dialect.

   For example, my mom’s family is from Kobe and they don’t pronounce the W’s in English words like “wood” or “woman”. It gets pronounced “ood” and “ooman”.

   Just my take from personal observation.

4. either, it was borrowed from another european language (not all katakana words are etymologically English, which is a mistake Japanese people make all the freaking time), or the [gw] was simplified to [g]. (Consonant+w sequences used to be “legal” in Japanese and got simplified out of the language a long time ago, and they still have trouble with them)

   the other thing is the sound changes loanwords undergo when entering Japanese have changed over time. I think if it were borrowed from English *now* it might be transcribed how you wrote it.

5. I’m not sure why people are just doing random conjecture without looking it up but ペンギン comes to Japanese by way of English, so all the answers about other European languages can be safely ignored

6. I’ve posted this recently in another thread but the problem here is that the katakana word is a *Japanese* word not an English one. It may have been borrowed but there’s no reason a Japanese person would need to care if it sounds “accurate”. Ask any average English speaker if they care that “croissant” is not “krussant”, LOL. Most borrowed words in English butcher the original pronunciation with French words being the simplest examples.

7. How did penguin end up as “penguin” and not “pengin”? 🐧

8. U.S. person moment caught in 4k lol

9. Because of Benedict Cumberbatch – it’s now officially “pengwin”: https://youtu.be/GflW9_t7LZk

10. Have you seen Benedict Cumberbatch try to pronounce “penguin”? It’s probably something to do with that

11. Pen-goo-in