Re: USAGE: More Japanese

On Sat, 5 Jul 2003 22:57:55 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

>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
Interesting -- but the vocabulary and grammar are quite a bit beyond what I
know.

>> 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.
I suspected adult male due to the unintelligibility.

>> >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]?
Without checking the archives, I'm pretty sure that was _French_ /a/.
Spanish and literary Italian are not quite so far front to me, although
Italian "dialects" could be completely different. I wonder if Luca has said
anything about Lombard /a/ here.

>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.
Don't you live in Georgia? There are people there (or used to be) that have
[a:], [a_"] (supposed to be fully low central), and [A:], all distinct. You
should take advantage of that!

Jeff

>
>-Mark