[Natsu]

> it also uncovered things like "CONTINEKU" "METARU GIRU SORIDU" (Continue, Metal Gear Solid), and at first I was like... are these folks writing english with japanese symbols?

It's pretty normal for Japanese people to write English words in katakana, especially in things like games. Many program menus are perfectly readable by English speakers if you can read katakana. It's something taught in every Japanese school, so being skilled in it makes you look intelligent.

It was probably closer to KONEKUTTO and METARU GIRU SORIDO though.

[brobinson]

Close, it's "soriddo" (ソリッド).

English loan words in Japanese are so fascinating to me. Here's an example: "limited slip differential" -> リミテッド・スリップ・デフ (rimiteddo surippu defu)

(The ・ is used to separate foreign words/names when a Japanese speaker would not be able to figure it out)

This must be how Romance-language speakers feel when they see their words modified and incorporated into English.

If you want to learn the Katakana syllabary, try this website I found recently: http://katakana.training

There's also http://hiragana.training for the other syllabary.

[Natsu]

Yes, it's surprising how many things you can figure out just by being able to read hiragana and katakana. Though there are a lot of things that tend to be anomalous, like the insertion of small tsu characters in places an English speaker would not imagine a glottal stop, even assuming an English speaker who even knows what that is.

Sometimes it really takes imagination. I have a family member who has an arcade game labeled "Hangly Man" (a Pac-Man clone). It took quite a while for it to dawn on me to reverse that back to kana (HANGURI) and figure out that it was meant to be "Hungry Man."

[brobinson]

>"Hangly Man"

That is quite amusing! I think the hardest word I've found for Koreans and Japanese to say is "parallel".