Just a question about Japanese out of quirky interest...

[The Frankensteiner]

Is there any Japanese words that do not end with any of these letters -
a, e, i, o, u, n?

I haven't found one yet.
And I don't think words that were borrowed from English count.

[ecarliz]

hmm I dont think so.. interesting though

[tomhogers]

Hi all,

You have to remember that Japanese is a syllibaric language, i.e. words in Japanese are formed by syllables, not by individual letters (whether vowels or consonants). The only quasi consonant used is n.
Geminate consonants (doubled consonants) are marked by doubling the consonant of the syllable following the sokuon, っ.

So, no Japanese word ends with a consonant. They can only end with a syllable, syllable + vowel, or n.

Cheers,

Tom

[The Frankensteiner]

Thanks for the answer!

[Jason]

This is another reason it's not good to rely on rouma-ji.

[Charles]

The fact is that no Japanese words end in a, e, i, o, u, or n or any other roman letter.

Unless you need survival phrases right away, just forget rouma-ji exists. ;)

[tintinium]

Well Charles, some japanese words end in a, i, u, e, o, n.

or their equivalents: あいうえおん・

however as was pointed out they can end on any syllable in the hiragana chart.

[Charles]

however as was pointed out they can end on any syllable in the hiragana chart.

They ONLY end in syllables on the hiragana chart. Not on the rouma-ji chart.

[tintinium]

^^^ True enough.