Re: USAGE: More Japanese

On Sat, Jul 05, 2003 at 10:28:04PM -0400, Jeff Jones wrote:
> Japanese has a particle "nya" from "ni wa" as well as "na" and "ga", but I
> don't know if it's appropriate here (or "na" for that matter, since it
> seems to be followed by a verb form "hutte ita" was raining or snowing ?).
Well, the song is "Makkana Sukaafu" ("Scarlet Scarf"), the official
melancholy-mood theme from "Uchyuu Senkan Yamato".  The lyrics
according to the web site are this (line breaks follow the melody,
not the grammar):

        Anoko ga hutte ita
        Makkana sukaafu
        Dare no
        Tame dato
        Omotte iru ka
        Dare no tame demo
        Ii zyanai ka
        Minna sono ki de
        Ireba ii
        Tabidatu otoko no mune ni wa
        Roman no kakera ga hosii no sa
        Ra ra ra ra ra ra . . .
(which actually sounds like "la la la la" here; the singer apparently
 learned how to make Western [l]s for vocalization purposes)
        Makkana sukaafu


> I should probably ask you about the age and gender of the singer -- that
> seems to make a difference in spoken Japanese, not sure about songs, though.
Adult male back in the 1970s.

> >Another question: is Japanese /a/ generally [a] or [A]?
>
> I'd say [a]. It seems to be more front than, say, Italian /a/. Definitely
> not [A] judging by what I've heard.
Hm.  Didn't we recently establish on here that Italian /a/ *was* [a]?
I'm apparently a bad judge; all "cardinal" /a/s (Spanish, Italian, Japanese)
sound like [A] to me; I only here [a] in regional American dialects.

-Mark