51–60 of 115 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Japanese does allow for word initial P in loan words, like Pokémon, so the sound isn’t impossible in Japanese. And pachinko is a Japanese word.
Fair; though I didn't say it's impossible, just unlikely :) Japanese words starting with "p" still exist, but they tend to be loanwords (pokemon = pocket + monster) or onomatopoeia (pachinko = pachin + ko). Thinking of it now, pokapoka is also a word, but again, an onomatopoeia.
Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related. It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant + vowel syllables are possible. Swahili an…
It's the equivalent of Latin or Greek words and affixes in English.
Because the Bantu languages (most prominently: Swahili) and Japanese have similar sound systems. Finnish is also oddly similar-sounding, or Hawaiian. None of them are actually related. It's because the syllable is restricted in the number of possible forms, in a similar way. (And they all have approximately five vowels. And a pitch accent.) In Hawaiian, nothing but consonant + vowel syllables are possible. Swahili an…
That's interesting. From an English perspective katakana (a system for writing words foreign to Japan, which can't write English very well) seems broken, but I guess from what you say that it's probably effective for most languages
Even with the way English does it for other languages that use the same alphabet, while the orthography may be similar, the pronunciation is generally just left to luck and the speaker's/listener's perception of the word's original language.
> People who pay attention to politics are probably familiar with the late Senator Gyang Nyam Shom Pwajok. Names can’t get more Chinese than that! That does not even remotely sound Chinese. Korean, maybe.
It's trying to make the claim that these are etymological connections, which is a bit sketchy, but the phonological similarities it has meticulously catalogued are surprisingly convincing!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Pokatokaino According to Google Translate, that would be "shortcuts" in Maori. (Reverse, "Pokatata".) Nice!
Maori is also another language that has the same vowel sounds as Japanese. Google is being generous in interpreting a nonsense word there though, Pokatata (as you saw when reversing the translation) is the correct spelling.
There's quite a few fun ones that do. Paraparaumu, matamata, tearai etc. Plenty more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are other subtle rules that language may follow in word formation. For example, in Japanese, a word like tokatokaino may mutate into tokadokaino due to a phonological effect called Rendaku (it depends on details like if "tokadokaino" is a compound word made of "toka"+"toka"+"ino")
Is this the reason that we call Toyoda's company by the name Toyota?
btw, there was once a consular official who worked at the Japanese embassy in Kenya, whose name was Mr. Kuma Moto. Every time he was introduced, it was hard for folks to suppress their laughter as the name literally meant "hot vagina" (in Kiswahili the noun goes first)
I guess it'd be like if there was someone who worked at the Russian embassy in Japanese and was named Mankovich because it would be rendered as マンコビッチ pussy bitch.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good point. Latin letters map to a big number of IPA sounds. I think this is specially true with consonants. Vowels, however, might be the same. For example, Spanish has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u in IPA). Japanese also has five IPA vowels and only the "u" is different in IPA
As a speaker of Scandinavian languages, literally none of the vowels in English map correctly to how we pronounce the same vowels. Several of the English vowels are diphthongs, which we spell out with double vowels. Like eng. "i" is our "ai", eng. "a" is our "ei" - "a bridge" is translated to "ei bro", where the articles are pronounced exactly the same. Or the Scottish word for home, "hame", is pronounced exactly lik…