"Murphy's Laws" and Polish puns

[Dennis R. Preston]

And the English-language announcement went "Former Prime Minister Sato died
last night, a famous person in Japanese public life, never having been
beaten by an erection."

Lots of times, it appears, things would have been seemlier in Japanese.

dInIs (puresuton, which, interestingly, starts out as "preston," goes to
"puresuton," and, with devoicing applied, goes back to "preston" - uh,
don't count morae)



>I think I've probably mentioned before the funny story a colleague told
>me about his stay in Japan ten or twelve years ago.  It was when Takeshita
>was often in the news.  The tv station that offered news in English once
>a day, done by Japanese newspeople, got on a kick of trying to anglicize
>Japanese names.  They did it with Takeshita's name for about two days
>before suddenly switching back to the Japanese pronunciation.
>   --Natalie (maynor at ra.msstate.edu)

Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736