Who decides what katakana will be used to form English loan words?


I love katakana, mostly because of how the characters look. But I am
constantly baffled by why certain loan words from English are constructed
using certain katakana sounds.

For example, if someone asked me to say "energy" in Japanese, I would have
guessed エナジー or maybe エネルジー...but definitely not エネルギー. Same with "cake": ケーク
sounds more natural than ケーキ. I understand that there are clearly many cases
where there isn't an obvious "best fit" for certain words, but often it feels
like some loan words pick the worst or least-likely sounds.

Who or what decides what loan words will sound like? Is there a governmental
office that takes part in this? Seemingly, since a lot of loan words are from
English, a Japanese-English speaker would be able to best form a loan word.

Am I reading too much into this? :)

**EDIT** : To be clear, I don't want to come across as, "How dare Japanese not
try to perfectly pronounce loan words from my language!" It's more like, "Hm.
I wonder why they say it this way when it's pretty easy to make a more
accurate-sounding word."




The second paragraph can be answered in large part by [What changes are made
to the pronunciation of
gairaigo?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/2147/91) and by [Less-
approximate and more-approximate forms of loan
words](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/4956/less-approximate-and-
more-approximate-forms-of-loan-words) and by [Different transcriptions for
words with related origin](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/3275/91) .

As for the third paragraph, Wikipedia says the Agency for Cultural Affairs
(文化庁) at the Ministry of Education of Japan (文部科学省) plays a role in [language
regulation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators). I don't
know whether it influences spelling of words. I know that it deprecated
[hentaigana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentaigana) and certain
[kanji](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/531/on-the-replacing-of-
kanji-obsoleted-in-the-1946-reforms-with-similar-looking-kan).




> but I am constantly baffled by why certain loan words from English are
> constructed using certain katakana sounds.

Loan words do not necessarily need to be borrowed from English. In fact, most
old loan words (in the 外来語 sense) were borrowed from Portuguese.

> For example, if someone asked me to say "energy" in Japanese, I would have
> guessed エナジー or maybe エネルジー...but definitely not エネルギー.

The word エネルギー is borrowed from German Energie, not English energy. There is
also the word エナジー which is borrowed from English energy, but it is not very
common.

There are many factors that come into effect when borrowing words. Other than
the source language, another is spelling: some loan words are based on the
original spelling rather pronunciation. Presumably the original speakers only
know the spelling and have no access to native speakers to base the Japanese
on.

