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I came across the sentence 混乱する気持ちもよーくわかる in my manga. I have translated it, but the use of the dash (which was vertical in the actual vertical text) stumped me for a bit (I thought it was よう at first, not よお). I was under the impression that a dash like that is only used in katakana, and in hirigana they use the character of the sound they want to extend. But that's not the case here.

So what does it mean when this happens? Is is a special case or exception, or is there some rule?

By the way, I ended up with よーくわかる all together meaning "I know you..." (thanks, Google Translate, for being more useful than a dictionary for once), which seems to be right in this context (In this case, "I know you're feeling confused"). That's why I think it might be a special case. (Searching よお on it's own ended up with "trouble brought on by sins of forebears"...)

Earthliŋ
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AlbeyAmakiir
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3 Answers3

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In Katakana, we use ー for some long vowels indeed. But words with it, like ユーロ are spelt this way!

However, in your case, there is no such word よーく、 ようく nor よおく. What this dash means is that the sound is lengthened. The word is just "よく". So, when the author wrote "よーくわかる" he meant "I reaaaaally understand".

That's it!

Axioplase
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    I agreeeeeed! On the same note, is it the same for the usage of ～ at the end of an exclamation, e.g. だめ～! – Lukman Aug 12 '11 at 04:31
  • Ah, that makes more sense. I thought that didn't happen much in Japanese, because the fewer sounds make it more likely you'll bump into another word. But now that I think about it, you can work out which word from the context. Thanks. – AlbeyAmakiir Aug 12 '11 at 04:41
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    Sometimes authors will also use small vowel kana (ぁぃぅぇぉァィゥェォ) to indicate that the sound is being lengthened. – sartak Aug 12 '11 at 05:46
  • Just to add. When something is written in hiragana, it follows the native Japanese phonological rules. Particularly, `ou` is pronounced `oo`, and `ei` is pronounced `ee`, so there is no need for the long-vowel symbol. Katakana does not have such rule, and you need to explicitly show the long vowel. Examples like `よーく` is seen often but is not the standard way of writing. –  Aug 12 '11 at 12:42
  • @sawa: `ou` is pronounced `oo`? Do you mean the English double o sound or the Japanese one? My Japanese teacher was talking about how romaji `oo` is a terrible way to write `おう` sounds, because that's a purely English way of thinking about it, defeating the purpose of trying to think in another language (and makes you confused between the ones that actually _are_ a long お sound). – AlbeyAmakiir Aug 13 '11 at 07:11
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    @AlbeyAmakiir: In sawa’s comment, `oo` and `ee` mean the オー and エー sounds, not the `oo` and `ee` sounds in English. – Tsuyoshi Ito Aug 14 '11 at 12:48
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    @Axioplase Btw what's the difference between `～` and `ー` ? – Pacerier May 29 '12 at 06:38
  • @pacerier: a nuance to express tremolo/pitch variation? Also, I believe that 〜 appears more at the end of words (いいな〜) and ー in the middle "よーく見てね!" – Axioplase Jun 22 '12 at 07:58
  • @AlbeyAmakiir I don't what your teacher is trying to say, but understand that おう and えい are pronounced identically to おお and ええ, respectively. – Angelos Jan 02 '17 at 20:10
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I understand, In Japanese, the long dash (ー) means the sound is lengthened, just as Axioplase said. Like this:

biiru
ビール (beer)

keeki
ケーキ (cake)
Sometimes, when writing in Romaji, (the English style of writing Japanese), the 'dash' is substituted with the letter and a small line over it. Like this:

Kēki

Bīru

Andy
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saminathan sasikala
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Japanese call cellphones Kei Tai Denwa (literally portable phone) but they don't use the kanji for keitai 携帯, they don't use the hiragana, けいたい, they use katakana ケータイ, which uses a hyphen when clearly it should use ケイタイ.

It just makes it look cool and international to use it like that.

Chocolate
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Robert Martens
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