'kimono' pronun & use

[Beverly Flanigan]

Also, transliteration of characters may result in a roman spelling that
attempts to reflect the original pronunciation but misfires because a
particular sound has no direct equivalent in "standard" English, as is the
case with the final vowel in "kimono."  And we obviously are interested in
all processes of transmission and change, aren't we?!

At 11:14 AM 6/23/2005, you wrote:
>On the surface that would appear to be true, but we certainly want to
>know the original pronunciation  of items as they enter English. For
>example, a variety of another language which has significant vowel
>reduction (although not necessarily "schwa-ing") would it seems to
>me, be a better candidate for English laxing-centralizing than a
>language with very little change in quality of its unstressed vowel
>tokens.
>
>dInIs
>
>>How the way "kimono" is pronounced in Japanese doesn't seem to me to
>>be a concern of the AMERICAN Dialect Society.
>>L. Urdang
>
>
>--
>Dennis R. Preston
>University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
>Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
>A-740 Wells Hall
>Michigan State University
>East Lansing, MI 48824
>Phone: (517) 432-3099
>Fax: (517) 432-2736
>preston at msu.edu