A grammar issue?


What is the meaning of the "long hyphen," --, a DASH really, for grammar,
translation, and punctuation? For example : シャワーヘッド (Shawaheddo)? Thank you




This 'long hyphen' is the elongation mark. It makes the vowel before it long.
In English what we call 'long vowels' are qualitatively different from 'short
vowels', but in Japanese the sole difference between long and short vowels is
their actual length. Long vowels are held for about twice as long as short.

('er' sounds tend to become アー in translation, by the way)

