Hey everyone!
I am beginning my Japanese-learning journey, and having learned Hiragana I am now moving on to Katakana.
I was wondering if you could please help me figure out how to write my name.
I’m Mathias, pronounced Mah-tee-ah-s (I’m french) so I figured I would be マチアス.
However, some website said it would rather be spelled マティアス.
Does ティ sound like “tee” or is it simply “tay-ee”?
Thanks for your help!
3 comments
マティアス would be closest. Small katakana vowel-beginning syllables after a consonant-beginning syllable will take on the sound of that consonant plus the vowel after it.
For example
フ on its own is romanized as fu
ファ is romanized as fa, like in ファミリーマート
テ te
ティ ti
“マチアス”would have the ちsound probably as in Hiragana.
ティis pronounced as” ti” by most of the people I think. You can check how it sounds like in Google translator maybe. Katakana does weird things in foreign words, like ヴ
The most reliable way to answer questions like this for the record is to find someone with the same name on Wikipedia and then check the Japanese version. I found a page for the French novelist Mathias Énard and it is indeed transliterated as マティアス