ヨーロッパ

Taken apart

No breakdown is shown for this word: Wiktionary's text for it doesn't give a split that spells the word and joins to its reading, and any other split would be a guess.

In a sentence

We don't have the data for this section. The pinned Tatoeba export has no sentence with a translation that uses this word and passes our filter.

What Wiktionary says

Quoted line by line from Wiktionary's Etymology section for this reading, taken from one dated dump so it can't change underneath us. Nothing below is paraphrased.

• “/europpa/ [jeuɾoppa] → /joːroppa/”
• “From Portuguese Europa.”
• Hedged“Some references source this from Dutch Europa; however, Dutch phonology makes this less likely, as the ⟨eu⟩ vowel combination has apparently been pronounced as the monophthongs /œː/ or /øː/ since the time of Middle Dutch. Meanwhile, in Portuguese, the ⟨eu⟩ vowel combination has been pronounced as the diphthong /ew/, a closer match for the borrowed Japanese pronunciation.”
• “Although this term is a 外来語 (gairaigo, “word of non-native or non-Middle Chinese origin”), it was borrowed early enough to be subject to the sound change from /eu/ to /joː/ during Late Middle Japanese. Compare similar developments in English (/ɛu̯/ → /juː/; /jʊ/, /jɔː/, /jɜː/ before /r/) during the Great Vowel Shift, which yields the modern English pronunciation of Europe.”
• Hedged“Alternatively, it is merely a historical kana orthography-induced spelling pronunciation; compare 要(えう) (yō), as well as アルコール (arukōru).”
• “Doublet of エウローペー (Eurōpē, “Europa”).”

Source: Wiktionary: ヨーロッパ (dump of 2026-09-02), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Reading, meaning and part of speech from JMdict, and kanji readings from KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG).

What the labels mean

外来語 Loanword

Words taken from a language other than Chinese, mostly European ones, usually written in katakana.

Borrowing

Taken over from another language.

Sound change

The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.