Japanese Pronunciation

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 6:50 pm

No, of course not.

But it's fun to scare people by discussing everyday speech patterns and asking questions in terms like...

Prof. Cowper wrote:X-Bar theory tells us that every X0-level category heads a maximal projection and that every maximal projection (except in coordinate clauses) has a unique head. How does this bear on the structure of clauses introduced by complimentizers?

I bet that must sound like a bunch of nonsense

***

Um, anyway, back to topic...

Japanese people also can't pronounce some of the common English readings of 'a', while English speakers tend to pronounce the Japanese 'ch' (as in 'chi', 'chu' or 'cho') incorrectly.

Trident · Post by **Trident** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 7:49 pm

Dude, I think I just learned more linguistics in five minutes reading that thread than I learned in an entire semester at college... Granted, it didn't help that I had a Chinese professor. It's kinda hard to study, say, phonetics when your prof can't even say the words properly...

Anyway. Do the Japanese alphabets use the same symbols for "L" and "R"? It would explain some of their strange transliterations of English words. For example, I would have subbed the name "Arisu" in Lain as "Alice," and the composer Kabalevsky became "Kabarofsky" on the OST for FLCL. If they're not considered different phonetically, is that then translated to writing?

Keaton · Post by **Keaton** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 7:54 pm

It probably that they can pronounce it, its just we cant hear it, since our hearing isnt intoned to japanese language

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:09 pm

Well, Japanese phonetic writing (as opposed to the kanji, which are tied to meaning rather than sound) goes by syllables. There's a total of... I think it's 96... possible syllables. But as far as r and l - no, there's 5 syllables that are generally transliterated as 'ra/ri/ru/re/ro' in English, but can also be read as 'la/li/lu/le/lo'