Re: Japanese Long Consonants

>Re long voiced C:
>> Japanese *does* allow them, e.g. beddo -- a Western style bed (IIRC),
>
>Could that be an attempt to show the [E] vowel quality?
Not AFAIK. It's written 'be smalltsu do'. The smalltsu only affects the
following letter; if there isn't one it's a glottal stop. I've never heard
it change the vowel preceeding.

>>even if they don't occur in native words.
They do. E.g. "shikko", knee-walking.

>How about long nasals, long /s/?  Fascinating language, I wish I'd had
>time/opportunity to learn it............among many others :-(
Nasal yes - e.g. "konnichiwa" (good morning), which is written 'ko n ni chi
ha' (the ha is being used as a grammatical marker, which is an irregular
pronounciation). I can't think of any use that would have smalltsu + n/m,
though there may be. (Syllabic n is sometimes pronounced m...)

S too - "sesseto", assidiously.

 - Sai

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