a wee predating of hotdog - if true - to circa 1870 (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:20 AM -0500 2/25/10, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 11:02 AM, Laurence Horn
><laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  At 9:51 AM -0600 2/25/10, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:
>>>
>>>The linked video is immediately followed by one entitled "Japan reacts
>>>to Toyoda hearings" -- never seen it spelled that way before.
>>
>>  He's the president of the company.  I don't know why the company name
>>  went voiceless when the family name was voiced.  Anyone?
>
>BBC explains:
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8534294.stm
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

Interesting--after the elaborate explanation involving the lucky
(well, maybe no longer quite so lucky) 8 strokes, the real story may
be that "voiced sounds...in Japanese are less preferable to voiceless
sounds".   One additional remark caught my eye:

"It was originally called Toyoda, it seems, but later changed to
Toyota (although it was felt that some in America continued to call
it Toyoda for some time)."

Of course most in American still continue to call it Toyoda, or more
accurately to refer to it in a way that fails to distinguish the two
pronunciations, since they'd merge as a voiced flap in that position
(intervocalically after a stressed vowel).  So were we calling it
"Toyota" or "Toyoda"?  Hard to know!

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org