Re: Whatever happened to Aelya?

--- Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
> Aidan Grey wrote:
> > I think the romanization of japanese with geminate
> letters
> > (chotto, for example) is a good example, since the
> native script actually
> > uses a small 'tsu'.
>
> On the other hand, some people *do* use - or ~ to
> represent the
> long-vowel mark in Japanese, writing things like
> konpyu-ta or de-to.
While that is a valid point, I think the author was
referring to double -consonants-, like in the example
"chotto", which is written chi(yo)(tsu)to in the
hiragana syllabary.

The (yo) and (tsu) in parentheses represent letters
which are written smaller, and thus do not comprise
entire syllables. The (yo) combines with 'chi' to make
'cho' because there is no single symbol for 'cho', and
the (tsu) represents gemination of the following
consonant. This is romanized as 'chotto', probably
under English influence.

In Romanji, letters are transliterated according to
pronunciation rather than phonemics. For example, the
combination which is phonemically /tu/ but
phonetically /tsu/ is written 'tsu' as in 'tsunami',
although alternate romanization schemes (there never
seems to be just one for any language!) would allow
'tunami' for the same word.

Lucky this came up the day after I read a lot of
material on Japanese orthography. ;)

> "There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a
> big dork or nerd,
> you just have to find people who are dorky the same
> way you are." -
> overheard
> ICQ: 18656696
> AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42
Levi Tooker, the dork king
nerd525@yahoo.com


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax
http://taxes.yahoo.com/

Reply