I need to know this because I brought up this thought to my ninth grade History teacher and she said that if I find out if it is true, I would get extra credit and I am not that good in that subject. Please help!
Example's like:
Hiroshima-H...i...r...o...sh...i...m...a
Tokyo-T...o...k...i...y...o (Notice that "Tokyo" sounds like "Toki yo.")
Nagasaki-N...a...g...a...s...a...k...i
Suzuki-S...u...z...u...k...i
Gaara-G...a...r...a
2007-02-07 13:12:55 · 5 answers · asked by ? 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
I need to know this because I brought up this thought to my ninth grade History teacher and she said that if I find out if it is true, I would get extra credit and I am not that good in that subject. Please help!
Example's like:
Hiroshima-H...i...r...o...sh...i...m...a
Tokyo-T...o...k...i...y...o (Notice that "Tokyo" sounds like "Toki yo.")
Nagasaki-N...a...g...a...s...a...
Suzuki-S...u...z...u...k...i
Gaara-G...a...r...a
2007-02-07 13:16:45 · update #1
The pattern is more like this:
Hi-ro-shi-ma
To-kyo
Na-ga-sa-ki
Su-zu-ki
All the vowel sounds are always, but ALWAYS, constant, and there are no diphthongs in spoken Japanese. The vowels define the syllable breaks.
The vowels sound like this:
a = ah (AH ha)
e = ee (eeek)
i = eh (when)
o = oo (uo)
u = uh (duh)
The variations will come from the consonants. And some of the English sounds, Japanese simply cannot form, so "r"s sound like "l"s and "l"s are almost impossible for them, sounding something like "r"s.
Many of the "new" Japanese words are imported from foreign languages, many English. These are words that have no equivalents in traditional Japanese, like windshield, steering wheel. When they import the word, the normal Kanjii is not used for the same reason, there are no equivalents because Kanjii is a complex series of many tens of thousands of pictographs; the word for forest looks like three trees, etc.
For newer, but not modern, words Kategana is used, which is a simpler phonetic alphabet.
Finally is the Hirigana, which takes the sounds of the foreign words and imports them into Japanese using their phonetics for the vowels and the sound of the consonants, but always ending the word in a vowel, most often -o or -a.
There are also dialects of Japanese that are highly regionalized. People from Tokyo may not understand the people from Northern Japan because of the dialect, unless they speak standardized Japanese. This is kind of like an American Texas drawl or a Southern accent, as compared to a New Jersey twang and Boston accent.
I hope this helps.
Oh, BTW, I was stationed in Japan for 13.5 years in the USAF, and I took college lessons in Japanese.
2007-02-07 13:44:20 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
In many cases this seems true, but not always. For example "takai" has two consecutive vowel sounds at the end. To me the pattern seems more like a case of consonant sounds always being followed by vowel sounds. The one exception I can find to this is "n", which doesn't need to be followed by a vowel sound.
2007-02-07 13:53:03 · answer #2 · answered by Groucho Returns 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Japanese does not use consonant blend sounds like you see in English. An example would be the word "flat." Notice that two consonants, F and L are blended to make a sound. You won't see this in Japanese.
2007-02-07 13:18:55 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
It's close to the truth. As Teppic points out, though, two vowels in a row is not unusual. You also have words like 'tsunami', which obviously have 'ts' together.
2007-02-07 14:34:49 · answer #4 · answered by paladin 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Well the title, and you can always look it up. Plus, they all look and sound different. K dramas are like 20+ episodes, and Japs are like ten.
2016-05-24 05:06:47 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋