Ask John: Why is Chi’s Name Spelled Different in English and Japanese?

Question:
Why does the American release of Chobits spell Chii’s name “Chi,” despite the kana clearly spelling it with two i’s?

Answer:
In Japanese, Chii’s name is spelled with the hiragana characters “chi, i.” This is done to clarify the fact that the “I” sound should be clearly vocalized. Because Japanese is spoken very quickly, vowels on the end of words are often not distinctly pronounced. The Hiragana for Chi’s name adds an extra “I” to prevent it from just being pronounced “Ch.” In English, the letters “Chi” are adequate to recreate the same sound that the Japanese letters “Chii” make. The danger in adding two “Is” in the English language spelling of “Chi” is that Americans may be tempted to hold the “I” sound for too long.

Japanese is a phonetic language while English is not. It’s tempting to want to apply English spelling rules to Japanese, but such doesn’t always work, as is the case here. An excellent example that I like to use is the word “fighter.” It simply doesn’t make sense to try to match the English and Japanese literal spellings of this word because the word is spelled “f-i-g-h-t-e-r” in English but “fu-a-i-ta” in Japanese.