エクスナレッジ

A publisher’s name: エクスナレッジ, me, totally failing to parse it. EKUSUNAREʔJI.¹

First mistake: it’s not one word. There are two words there.

EKUSU NAREʔJI. X-knowledge.

Then, the next day, I remembered X, but had forgotton NAREʔJI already. It did’t help that neither [ˈnɒlɪdʒ] (UK pronunciation), nor /ˈnɑlədʒ/ (US pronunciation) is exactly like /narɛʔji/. Also, a ッ before a voiced consonant? Never seen that before. And, how do you put that in Hepburn spelling? narejji? Or /naredzji/ (looks Arabic). I checked the actual pronunciation on Jdic, and yes, the glottle stop is very much there, it’s not like ナッシュ nasshu where the s is lengthed. ナレッジ is /nareʔ ji/.

1. Key to IPA [ʔ], the glottal stop. Think uh-oh!. The abrupt stop beween uh and oh is the glottal stop. It’s a legitimate sound, some languages have a letter for it, amazingly even Japanese. It’s the little TSU, ッ or っ before certain consonants. In regular Hepburn spelling it’s transcribed with a doubling of the following consonant (if there is one, otherwise, nothing). ボット botto (a bot), あっ! A!.