Voice of God

[Herb Stahlke]

C = Consonant, V = Vowel

Specifically, what Beverley was getting at is that syllables in Japanese can't have more than one consonant before, after, or between vowels, unless the consonant is /n/   So when Japanese borrows a word from English that does have consonant clusters, like the /sb/ in "baseball", speakers have to break the cluster up by adding vowels.  So they will say something like "besuboru".  The final -u is because Japanese words can't end in consonants either, except for /n/.  All this follows from the statement that Japanese is a CV language.

Herb Stahlke
Ball State University

>>> Abatefr at CS.COM 04/21/00 12:51PM >>>
Please, for the linguistically ignorant: what is CV?

Thanks,

Frank Abate

American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote:
>
> >JANGLISH (continued)
> >
> >    "Since 1893.  108th Amievsary."
> >    "Multi International Pab Restaurant."
> >     "Toddoler."  (This is how Japanese pronounce it--ed.)
> >
> >-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Since Japanese is a CV language, the inserted syllable in 'toddoler' is
> understandable.  Ditto for your earlier cited "Salasa burger."
>
>
> _____________________________________________
> Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
> Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
> Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
> http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm
>