Another Japanese Grammatical mystery

[alpha]

could someone tell me the relevance and difference between:

ェ and エ

i see many words that translate the same and can appear to use either

does it change the meaning of the word, depending on which one is used?

[thefabfive]

I could be way off here, but I'll give it a shot.

エ (the big one) is used on its own as the 'e' sound.

エ can be combined with other characters to produce a different sound, ie:

ツェ - tse -> tsu + e
クェ - kwe -> ku + e

So when used in conjunction with another character the ェ (small one) is used. I'd be happy to hear the natives' interpretation of this as mine is just hypothesis.

[alpha]

heres a real life example:

ウエスタン
ウェスタン

both mean "Western" accoriding to Mr Breen - but only 1 gets proper OVT

so i thought, oh ok, then so terms with the little one are duds.

nope. i checked my portfolio and i have a few more examples using the little version, but they get good ovt.

so.. i dunno

[thefabfive]

In your example, both of these terms sound like "western"

ウエ - > u + e
ウェ - > we

Similar sounds if not identical. Probably the difference between 'color' and 'colour'. One is just used more than the other.

[alpha]

Originally Posted by thefabfive

In your example, both of these terms sound like "western"

ウエ - > u + e
ウェ - > we

Similar sounds if not identical. Probably the difference between 'color' and 'colour'. One is just used more than the other.

hmm, ok thanks Fab

[rhys]

Originally Posted by thefabfive

In your example, both of these terms sound like "western"

ウエ - > u + e
ウェ - > we

Similar sounds if not identical. Probably the difference between 'color' and 'colour'. One is just used more than the other.

Pretty close. Consider it to be 2 different pronunciations of the same word that are spelled somewhat differently. Like some people say "to-ma-to" and others say "to-may-to" but it means the same thing. In this case, they actually spell it differently too.

Like fab says, one is just used more than the other. I suspect that OVT is putting the two together into one OVT result which is why you don't see the variant.

[mdw]

Yep, this is the same kind of issue I found when I got ソフトウエア.jp (software)
It's more like "soft-u-e-a" notice the エ in the middle. Actually I thought this was a typo, but found many companies using it on the web.

My Japanese friends all said it's OK, and had trouble explaining the difference between this and the one I thought was "the right one". Just a bit less frequently used that's all.

[alpha]

Fab, mdw, Rhys - thanks Guys for the comments.