Why is it spelt adzuki when it's あずき?

Like at all? I always thought it was primarily spelt adzuki because it used づ and there’s that whole debate about whether there’s any difference between ず and づ but today I just learnt it uses regular old ず, so I’m confused then why adzuki even became an option? If anyone could enlighten me on this then it’s be much appreciated.

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The classical spelling was あづき and presumably the importing of the word and romanization took place before the spelling reforms that updated it to あずき.

If you ever want to check what the spelling of a word was in classical Japanese, you can use a site like Weblio, and they list it in small font.

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Wow thank you very much for the insightful reply.

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Huh. I looked that up myself when I was pondering why くず is rendered as “kudzu” in English, and couldn’t find any particular evidence that either word was ever spelt with a づ. I eventually decided to just blame it on the Portuguese. :stuck_out_tongue:

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It’s also possible for there to just be different romanizations from different eras.

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I always use opportunities like this to complain about Japan taking the pronunciation from the United States for a bunch of places and names in Spanish.

I’m looking at you, メキシコ. :eyes:

And ロサンゼルス. :weary:

How’d you manage to get those pictures? I don’t know how to use weblio and I’d like to know how you got to where you got for あずき.

oh ok thanks, I was using this 「あずき」の英語・英語例文・英語表現 - Weblio和英辞書 which I guess is something for english.

That one is a dictionary meant for Japanese learners of English. But it can of course be used the opposite way hence the E-J/J-E name.

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Although the transcription for Japanese is a lot kinder than other languages sometimes there are words that don’t romanize according to the rules. I’m also thinking about matcha rather than maccha but I suppose that is for the practical reason that it would sound like mak-kah in English. Though in Italian it would read like Japanese wouldn’t it? (Note I do not speak Italian in the slightest… just thinking about cappuccino.)

The Italian c is only pronounced like an English ch if it precedes the vowels i or e, afaik, so it would have to be something like maccia. Italian uses ch before those vowels to keep it hard.

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Macciato?

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