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First of all, I know next to nothing about Japanese, but this question came up
to me recently. I was playing this board game called Shadow Hunters with my
friends and on the cards below the English name, the Japanese name of the game
was also written: シャドウハンタアス. Well, I noticed that the end of シャドウ was オウ and
not オー and I thought that it was kind of wierd. My friend pointed out that
maybe it should be read as ou and not ō. Which way is it? Are there rules for
this? Thanks in advance.
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2018-04-04T17:02:15.780
57723
2018-04-04T17:19:03.840
29423
question
pronunciation katakana
オウ pronounced as ō or ou
The syllables written as オオ, オー, and オウ are pronounced the same in Japanese.
If you look at the dictionary entry
[here](http://jisho.org/word/%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A3%E3%83%89%E3%83%BC), you'll see
that シャドウ is an alternate form of シャドー. Either way is fine, and the
pronunciation doesn't change. Why you'd choose one form over the other, I'm
not sure, but I'm guessing in this case it was because the game or packaging
designers didn't like the way the 長音 dash looked in the middle of the name.
(However, I just looked it up and the name is actually written シャドウハンターズ, so
who knows!)
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-04-04T17:19:03.840
57724
2018-04-04T17:19:03.840
25413
57723
answer