> It's actually 'shima' for island. Not sure if 'jima' works too, but shima is definitely more common.
Correct, "island" is shima, but in this case we have a phenomenon in Japanese known as "sequential voicing" (連濁, rendaku) in which the first syllable of the second word of a compound is changed from an unvoiced consonant to a voiced consonant. This is particularly common when dealing with native Japanese compounds; i.e., compounds using words not derived from the imported Chinese pronunciations of characters. So "island" (島) by itself would be shima, but when used as a suffix, the initial consonant sh becomes voiced to j, and thus jima. Another example is "fire" (火), pronounced hi alone, but voiced to bi as the second half of words such as "fireworks" (花火, hanabi).
> It's actually 'shima' for island. Not sure if 'jima' works too, but shima is definitely more common.
Correct, "island" is shima, but in this case we have a phenomenon in Japanese known as "sequential voicing" (連濁, rendaku) in which the first syllable of the second word of a compound is changed from an unvoiced consonant to a voiced consonant. This is particularly common when dealing with native Japanese compounds; i.e., compounds using words not derived from the imported Chinese pronunciations of characters. So "island" (島) by itself would be shima, but when used as a suffix, the initial consonant sh becomes voiced to j, and thus jima. Another example is "fire" (火), pronounced hi alone, but voiced to bi as the second half of words such as "fireworks" (花火, hanabi).