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At first I thought that Japanese people pronouncing Qantas as カンタス was an
urban legend (the start of "カンタス" matches a vulgar four letter word in
English), but I've since found out that it's real, with Qantas' Japanese
homepage having "カンタス航空｜ホームページ｜航空券｜旅行情報 - Qantas".

By contrast, there's almost always a "w" style sound when Australians
pronounce it. Wiktionary gives an IPA of /ˈkwɒntəs/, and the second sentence
of the [Japanese edition of Wikipedia's article on the
airline](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BF%E3%82%B9%E8%88%AA%E7%A9%BA)
mentions how Australians pronounce it with three citations.

Why is Qantas spelt "カンタス" in Japanese?

As far as I can tell, it isn't because it resembles how non-Australian English
speakers pronounce the word - in the American movie "Rain Man" they pronounce
it with a "w" sound.

"カンタス" could be seen as matching a phonetic spelling of "Qantas", like how
English-speakers pronounce "Qatar", but I thought katakana was typically based
on how words are actually pronounced.

Alternatively, is it possible that katakana lacks the capability of indicating
the "w" sound in this scenario?
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2017-07-30T02:08:10.750
51860
2017-07-30T14:00:34.703
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question
katakana loanwords spelling
Why is Qantas spelt カンタス?
It's not impossible to render is as クワンタス but it's not really commercially
advantageous to adopt such a peculiar pronunciation. After all, I don't know
how they decided their own name since it's a proper noun like mackygoo says.
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2017-07-30T14:00:34.703
51874
2017-07-30T14:00:34.703
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answer