Re: Japanese phonemes (was Re: The Monovocalic PIE Myth (was Germans have no /w/, ...))

From: "Nik Taylor" <yonjuuni@...>

> The reason is that there's no voiced /h/, and voiced /h/ is very rare
> anyways.  "f" simply DOES NOT EXIST in Japanese on a PHONEMIC level.
It doesn't really exist on a phonetic level either; it's actually [P] (IPA
phi), which makes me think more of the sound of [W] than [f]. But we're so
used to seeing that big mountain called Fuji instead of Huzi, thanks to Rev.
Hepburn.

> /w/ only occurs before /a/ (ban on /wi/ and /we/ is moderately
>     unusual, ban on /wo/ and /wu/ is pretty typical)
The Hiragana and Katakana syllabries actually do have characters for /we/,
/wi/, and /wo/ (but still no /je/). I think they're only used for foreign
words (that aren't Sino-Japanese).

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