Re: CHAT: F.L.O.E.S.

> That's not odd or bad, just phonemic.  The [s] of "sa" and the  [S] of
"s(h)i"
> are the same phoneme in Japanese, and the same thing goes for z/j and
> f/h.  As in English, there are etymological hints at the phonemic level
> which can help you figure out what a word means, which are lost in a
> completely phonetic Romanization.
Oh, I know. I understand why they did some of the things they did in the
romanization, I just don't like it. And it contributes to the horrible
Japanese some people in the class have. I would prefer to simply read it as
hiragana and katakana (since our book doesn't differentiate between the two
in its romanization)

>
>
> > "taberu n desu". I pronounce it, emulating my sensei as best I can, as
> > [tabe4MndEs:] (forgiving my horrible IPAing)
>
> More like [tabe4Mn=dEs:]; the n is syllabic.
My mistake in IPAing, then. Though I'm bad at syllabizing it in that
situation.

>
> > Why is it that some people seem unable to read things as something other
> > than their native language?
>
> It's more the case that some people have more ability to do so, and that
> is largely a function of the degree to which you're exposed to other
> languages while growing up.
Oh, I know. It was a random rhetorical question :P

> Wow, quite a joke! Does Japanese have phonemic /M/, or is it an allophone
> of /u/? Is it marked in romagi?
Kepe in mind I don't understand vowel phonetics. I looked at my handy "chart
of sounds in Japanese in IPA", figured out through comparing with the
English chart which was which, and then looked up the CXS symbol for it. So
I typed it as such. I may have made a mistake somewhere along the line.

It's romanized as "u", though, if that helps any.

-Keith

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