Re: CHAT: "T's okay" and initial /ts/ affricates

Tom Wier wrote:
>
> Laurie Gerholz wrote:
>
> > I'm not really sure. I suspect that I use both in speech. I never really
> > thought about it. The /tsoukei/ shouldn't really be a violoation of
> > Standard English phonology because it's *actually* a contraction of
> > "it's okay".
>
> Well, I meant by that that for most English speakers, /ts/cannot be used in initial position
> (the ones already mentioned excepted
> of course).
Okay, understood.

> I remember one time I was eating at a Chinese restaurant
> with my parents, and I thought I'd order Capt. Tsou's something-
> or-other (can't remember what now).  I asked the waiter about it,
> and I distinctly remember him saying /souz/, not /tsouz/ (the waiter
> was a native English speaker, not as is often the case natively
> a speaker of one of the Chinese languages).  Also, for most speakers,
> "tse-tse fly" is pronounced as /sisi/, not /tsitsi/. The same goes for initial
> /N/ (as in kiNG).
>
This reminds me of a puzzle I've been having with Japanese. I suppose
I'll just have to remember to ask my teacher directly about it. The
puzzle is with the syllable which is romanized as "tsu". For any of you
familiar with the Japanese syllabary, I'm speaking of the syllable which
is in the "ta" row in the "u" column.

Is it supposed to be pronounced (using English spellings) "tu", "tsu" or
even "su"? I don't believe the last is possible, as there is a distinct
"su" syllable. This is of particular interest to me, as my husband's
last name is "Tsuchiya". At the same time, a former coworker who is a
native speaker of Japanese, told me flat out that there is no syllable
pronounced as "tsu". I think he was claiming that "tu" was the preferred
pronounciation.

So now I'm wondering (and yes, I will ask my teacher, who has been kind
enough to sort out other puzzles of this nature for me), are both
perhaps correct? I just can't see the "tsu" remaining as a valid
romanization if it wasn't correct for some native speakers. Maybe only
"tu" was correct in my coworker's dialect?

Just found out a confirmation that the "ga" syllables transform into
"nga" variants in certain circumstances. I had heard it in my teacher's
speech, and we finally asked her about it last week. She confirmed that
it was correct, that both are used. My current guess is that the "ga"
syllables become the "nga" equivalents when they are word-internal. When
word-initial, I still clearly hear sensei say "ga".

Laurie
---
Laurie Gerholz
milo@winternet.com
http://www.winternet.com/~milo