Jen
How do I pronounce タ三ア in Japanese? A friend of mine who knows I am learning Japanese got me the very adorable bilingual book "Am I small?" (”私、小さい”)In English the main character is called Tamia so I would assume that 三 would be pronounced "mi" but I can't seem to find a good source on this. If context helps the first sentence in the book is "この 子 が タ三ア。” The English sentence being "This is Tamia." So than the Japanese version would basically mean "This child is Tamia." if I'm reading it correctly. Is this correct?
Aug 24, 2015 1:17 AM
Answers · 7
2
You(and we) can not pronounce"タ三ア". "三" is kanji(Chinese character) means "three". "三" should be "ミ"(katakana). Then you(and we) can pronounce"タミア<tamia>". Young Buddhist priests took basically a part of the kanji and used it as a phonogram in order to write down quickly lecture of teacher in 9th century. In most, on-yomi<a sound reading=Chinese pronunciation> was used, but there are several katakana that kun-yomi<the Japanese reading=Japanese translation> was used. ミ<mi> is one of them. The letterform of "ミ" has come from "三". "この 子 が/は タミア。" means "This child is Tamia".
August 24, 2015
み is a kun'yomi reading for the Kanji 三, so yes, that could be pronounced tamia
August 24, 2015
Everything you said in your question is correct. The romanji for the sentence is "kono ko ga Tamia" For foreign words or names they use the katakana alphabet; the characters in Tamia are katakana. The rest is the hiragana alphabet, except for ko, which is kanji.
August 24, 2015
Still haven’t found your answers?
Write down your questions and let the native speakers help you!