Re: Is "ma" Proto-World? (Re: Re: Comparison ofphilosophicallanguages)

In a message dated 1/26/2003 5:36:37 AM Pacific Standard Time,
butsuri@BUTSURI.FREESERVE.CO.UK writes:


> That does sound much more likely.  What's interesting, if this is the
> case, is that an impression of the kind of errors made by children has
> endured in the culture past a sound change which renders such errors
> improbable.
>
>
> From _Mangajin's Basic Japanese Through Comics_:
> | In the world of Manga, the _shi_ sound is hard for children to make,
> | and with very young children it typically comes out as _chi_.  Our
> | more linguistically-enlightened colleagues tell us that in the
> | languages of the world, the "s" sound is more common by far than the
> | "ch" sound, and that phonetically, such a substitution is unlikely.
> | No matter what the case, in the world of manga, TV comedy, etc.,
> | this substitution is perhaps the most common way of giving speech
> | that infantile touch.
>
> NOTE: although most of the examples given (of baby-talk in Japanese
> comics) involve [Si] (orthographically, and perhaps phonemically,
> /si/) there are some based on other s- syllables.  There's also an
> example given of [tsM]->[chM] substitution ([tsM] is orthographic
> <tu>), showing the same mispronunciation you suggested.
 Would this be like the substitution of /w/ for /l/ in English? Cartoons,
stand-up acts, and ethnologically transcribed speech of five-year-old
fictional characters always seem to be using "w" instead of "L" -- "wook",
"wuv", "Want a wowwipop?" -- when the character is under the age of about 7
or 8, even though I have seldom actually heard little kids talking like this.
(Or, when adults do baby-talk to babies, they sarcastically do this too.)