How do the Japanese usually write what we call "kanban" in English? In katakana or something?

@OmarL Yes in katakana. As I have searched sometimes in hiragana nowadays which suggests the term is popularized, but no kanji.

@Will Maybe only me but doesn't the Japanese あ sound closest to "u" in "but" (AmE)?

@broccolifacemask maybe you've picked suboptimally for the letters of the english approximation... "ku" makes me think a "く" sound exclusively. I'd be tempted to write the english approx as "kam-bam" or similar.

@mbrig How about "kuhm-bung" or something? (I don't believe the last consonant would be usually -m)

I see now what you were going for. It probably works better when using existing English letter pairings or words instead: cum bun. Then again, I guess that solution has its own share of downsides >_>

@Will What I tried to do: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Pronunciation_respelling_key I'd like to hear native speakers' opinions on how much decipherable it is. (And really bun rather than bung?)

Regarding ん: I can't think of any example I would transliterate as ng. The g part of ng in English involves a much stronger "squeeze" of the back of the mouth than ん, as far as I can tell. There might be dialects of English where the difference is less pronounced though.

@Will Thank you for your input. There is certainly a difficulty transcribing the last ん which almost sounds like a nasal vowel, but I thought ng was better in terms of the point of articulation. Now let me see...

@broccolifacemask I'm not a linguist to know exactly how to explain it, but while I understand the u sound from "but" is what you're going for, I don't hear it at all in the ways you're writing it. ku sounds like く, bu makes a "b-uhhhh", cum makes a "c-ummm". And I don't think uh/um is the correct sound for か? e.g. in the comments on this pronunciacion video of kanban youtube.com/watch?v=rGa4JN8c64M , an english speaker suggests "Kahn Bahm" as a "englification" of what the Japanese guy says. ん->m isn't unheard of either, like senpai/sempai.

@mbrig Thank you for your input too. How do you exactly hear the vowel of か? Because in that video, he mentions three type of "あ": cat, mother, and father; and I think it's typically the second one that I should transcribe into. Also for m "bahm", I'm very sure it's just closing lips at the end of a phrase, some Japanese speakers commonly do.

@broccolifacemask I tend to think of the "a" part of か as "ah", but as you/the video points out, that's not quite correct in japanese. But at the same time, to me, "mother" makes a "muh" sound, too "deep" to correctly match what I hear from Japanese speakers. Given the video's comparison of american vs british pronunciation, the correct version sounds somewhat in the middle (a syllable that doesn't quite exist in english, probably the cause of all the confusion...). At least in my "dialect"/to my ears, "ah" is much closer than "uh" to the Japanese. And in terms of transliteration, "ku" is 1/2

far too leading to a く sound (its the romaji for a reason!) for me to ever read "kum" and think of anything resembling かん (as I hear it). I think your edit is edit is good, "come" is much closer. Thank you very much for the discussion, this has given me a lot to think about/analyse in terms of my journey of learning japanese :) 2/2

As a semi-related aside, how does "Kappa" (河童) sound to you? To me it is very much the "a" from "cat", but I know that か should be relatively consistent between different Japanese words... leaving me at a bit of a loss. In my mind, the difference is a slight modification to the ending of the syllable (p vs n/m sound), but perhaps its more a change to middle?

@mbrig An interesting statement... voca.ro/1ddtowa0Ws6B This is a voice synth output of Suzuki-kun for kappa, happa, akka, kakka. Do you still hear "cat" sound in "kappa"? If so, do all four words sound like that or only some of them?

@broccolifacemask I created a chat room so that I don't further clutter the comments on your answer (rather rude of me as a guest to your site :( ): chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/129760/…