Japanese phonemes

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à william drewery :
>
>> >
>> > It doesn't really have /f/, tho.  [P] is an
>> > allophone of /h/
>> >
>> True. But I can't think of any voiced equivalent to
>> it. I'm guessing it's that restriction again.
>
>
> [B] can be found only in borrowings that come with [v] in it, and then
> not for all speakers (many speakers borrow [v] as [b], Like Spanish :)
> ). Still, [B] appears often enough to have a way to write it down (a
> strange one at that. To write down a syllable beginning with [B], use
> the katakana for u /M/, add to it the voicing sign, and follow it with a
> small form of the katakana for the vowel of the syllable, except when
> this vowel is /M/ itself :) ).
Heh. In this one case, it seems that katakana is an abugida!

> En réponse à Danny Wier :
>
  >>  I think they're only used for foreign
>> words (that aren't Sino-Japanese).
>
> No they're not. Foreign [we] and [wi] sequences are usually borrowed as
> [M.e] and [M.i], i.e. they become bisyllabic (I don't have any example
> right now, but I do remember seeing such borrowings). If you find it
> strange, it's actually not uncommon for Japanese to borrow single
> syllables as bisyllables. All syllables with a consonantic non-nasal
> coda are borrowed that way ("up" is borrowed as |appu| for instance).
>
> The ban on [we] and [wi] is very alive in Japanese (at least standardly
> :) ).
I have seen [we] and [wi] written as katakana U + small E or I, and I
think that'd be generally understood, but I doubt it's at all common.
Funny thing, my first Japanese teacher told me to spell my last name in
katakana as U, small O, RE, SU, which just seems like a weird and
roundabout way of doing it--especially since the first two syllables are
definitely A-like the way I pronounce it (well, the second is more of a
schwa, but still nowhere near /e/). I prefer to write it WARASU.