Do you know why Jaguars in Japanese is pronounced like Ja-gas? What is the origin history? In the English speaking world, English speakers always fight over Jag-wahr vs Jag-yu-ar, suddenly in Japanese there’s no U at all and it’s actually closer to “Jagger” than any of the English “Jaguar”. Why is it not something like Jagua ジャグア ー or ジャグワー ?
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Don’t forget the preferred American pronunciation of “Jag-wire”.
I thought it was a joke the first time I heard it… but alas…
For these kind of questions you shouldn’t assume that they always took the word from the english language. The person who might’ve introduced the word might’ve had a strong accent or it could’ve also been from a different language altogether where its pronounced differently.
Because how a loan word sounds in the native language doesn’t necessarily matter? It just needs to vaguely resemble the original.
I mean, 東京 is not pronounced accurately in English, Russian spells it Токио which is just giving up any possibility of reading it correctly. But then, I’m pretty sure nobody cares that it’s not accurate. Same idea.
For the same reason that Portuguese took the word *îagûara* from Old Tupi and turned it into *jaguar* [ʒaˈɣwaɾ], which the English world then adopted and now squabbles about its “proper” pronounciation – a pronounciation that a native Tupi speaker (if they’d still exist) probably wouldn’t even recognize.
By the way, when looking for etymology a search for **word + wiktionary** (works for most languages) or **word + 語源** for Japanese sources will bring you results.
Jacuzzi is another one.