Re: Con-Alphabets & Real Languages

In a message dated 30.12.2001 04:24:23 AM, Kou (laokou@MSN.COM) very
eloquently writes:

><<SNiPPaGe BRuTe>> And with that, a dash of exoticism. English could have
fully
>adopted/embraced the word "chic" as "sheek" or "sheak" (how often is "ch"
>/S/ in English, save French loans?), but it loses something, don't you
>think (and English takes in loanwords easily)? Japanese (also a loanword
fiend)
>
    *appreciative-lingua-mangler-chuckle* no FRiKKiN' JoKe... just lookin' at
Japanese onomatopoeiac words, one sees glimpses of both the "High Touch"/old,
traditional Japanese culture AND the "Hi Tech" one!

>has adopted non-standard Japanese usages of katakana to accomodate the
>non-native sounds of "f" and "v" (katakana "hu" with a subscript "i"
>(normally not possible) renders "fish" as "huishyu"; similarly "bu" plus
>subscript "i" gets you a "v". Why, the contortions? 'Cause it's foreign.
>
>I guess, point of above paragraph: loanwords and cultural ebb and flow.
    ::in awe of Kou (not the first time either)::    ::speechless::

~OR~  as Roger (Romilly) wrote:

>Kou pretty much pre-empted everything I was going to say.......

czHANg, One-of-Many Avatars of Sun WuKong, a.k.a. "Monkey," a.k.a.
"TricksterGod of the Han Chinese"... Agent Provocateur of/for the Dark Gods
of Creative Chaos

"Occupation?"
"Resistance."