Voice of God

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 01:07 PM 4/21/00 -0500, you wrote:
>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

And I'll add my favorite, where /th/ (nonexistent in Japanese) is also
changed:  'basu kontororu' = birth control.


_____________________________________________
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