Yet another new admin!

[billgoku]

Originally Posted by Rasberry

Greetings mortals.....

nah i promise to be the same person i have always been..... Sticking it to the man (either selo or Hina!)

Yeah, we'll see about that...and who are you callin a mortal Congrats to you Rasmandy.

[☼Pepe☼]

Cheers to Rasberry!


I knew you had it in you, good man!

Make us proud.

[Kataja76]

Originally Posted by Betong Åsna

Ryasuberi?

You find it funny, dear Betongu Ōsuna-san? (Yes, based on Swedish pronounciation, he is no Asuna!)

Rasuberi might be more correct. My logic was like, if love becomes rabu, then lad would become ryadu, consonant palatalization reflecting the difference between the vowels. That would lead to Ryasu.

[Tyroki]

Congrats n00berry Now do my dirty work *Pulls out the strings and quickly attaches them to Ras* I am your new puppetmaster!

[Rasberry]

thanx for the help ty, now my rams move for me!

[Tyroki]

Ohohooo. You dirty swine :O

[s0k0_kit4ru]

grats raspberry

[Nohido Keisuke]

...what took u so long Ras O_o
congratz!!

[wålf-kun]

wow, congratulations, Rasberry

I'm sure you'll make a great admin!

[The Emperor]

Originally Posted by Betong Åsna

We've had a lot of complaints the entire admin staff is from a small island floating in the North Atlantic somewhere, so we've decided to put a stop to that.

Damn you Betong! You weakened our bargaining position!

[Betong Åsna]

Originally Posted by Kataja76

You find it funny, dear Betongu Ōsuna-san? (Yes, based on Swedish pronounciation, he is no Asuna!)

Rasuberi might be more correct. My logic was like, if love becomes rabu, then lad would become ryadu, consonant palatalization reflecting the difference between the vowels. That would lead to Ryasu.

Not so. Japanese has fewer vowel sounds than English, so often two or more different sounds will be transliterated into only one. The 'ya' you're thinking of, I assume, is one that might be used in words such as 'kyandii' (candy), which I put down entirely to them copying words off Americans who were pronouncing them wrong in the first place. 'Kandii' would make far more sense.

Rasuberi it is!

And my user title was ベトン・オスナ for ages! Would Ousuna be better than Osuna? My Swedish is non-existent!

[Orca Misaki II]

I swear, I step out for a week, and look what happens!

Congratulations, Ras! I'm sure you'll make a wonderful admin!

[Kataja76]

Originally Posted by Betong Åsna

The 'ya' you're thinking of, I assume, is one that might be used in words such as 'kyandii' (candy), which I put down entirely to them copying words off Americans who were pronouncing them wrong in the first place. 'Kandii' would make far more sense.

Oh, I think we have reached a level a phonetics that is difficult to discuss without using the IPA alphabet. I get your point even if I am not sure about kandii. Is rasp- pronounced with a vowel similar to fast? If so, I agree with you about Rasuberi. I learned British pronounciation (-noun-!) at school but have had a lot more contacts with U.S. pronunciation (-nun-!) since then.

Would Ousuna be better than Osuna?

The whole use of ou in transcribing Japanese confuses me. My knowledge of Japanese phonetics is far from good, but I think they usually pronounce straight long vowels that sound like the English aw (law) rather than like ow (low) to me. For some reason, some English people have wanted to use ou (doujin) instead of ō to latinise this long sound.

The way I hear and understand Swedish åsna (pronounced exactly like Åsna, although evil), the first sound is a long vowel without a trace of dipthongisation. So if I should teach it to an English-speaking layman, I would write the pronounciation guide as something like "awss-nah" and point out that the first vowel is long, the last one is short.

EDIT: Is it so that the Japanese never write an o kana after another kana of the o series, but always use ro-u type combinations to represent long ō sounds? My brother has told me that such combinations are pronounced with straight long ō vowels in original Japanese words due to a historical ou > ō change. That would make sense...

To add to the confusion, my computer lacks many Unicode extensions. Every time you write hiragana, IPA letters, kanji, katakana, or Korean syllable signs, I get these funny boxes with Unicode numbers. I should really do something about that.

[Betong Åsna]

Yes you should

Yes, ou is pronounced 'aww', roughly, so I guess Åsna would indeed be ousuna. The reason I use ou over ō, at least, is that that's how it's spelt in Japanese, and so looks less confusing to me. To someone who doesn't speak Japanese, I suppose ō would be better.

And there are a few exceptions to the rule. For example, ōkii is spelt 'ookii', as is 'Oosaka'. There's no difference in pronounciation, though, and they're few and far between.

Go and get you unicode sorted!

[Kataja76]

Originally Posted by Betong Åsna

And there are a few exceptions to the rule. For example, ōkii is spelt 'ookii', as is 'Oosaka'. There's no difference in pronounciation, though, and they're few and far between.

I had a chat with my brother who knows a bit more about the basics of Japanese. He said that the Japanese kana spelling "o-u" reflects a former diphthong, which is pronounced as a long vowel in modern Japanese (a regular sound change has occurred at some point). If so, I would spell "o-o-su-na" (just like "o-o-sa-ka"), because there is no etymological reason to use the "o-u" combination. This is sort of universal linguistic logic; the Japanese might follow a different train of thought (because of aesthetic reasons, for example).

[Betong Åsna]

Lack of etymological reason shouldn't be enough to deviate from the norm. In fact, now I come to think of it (and your lack of kana recognition is a burden now), in katakana it would simply be o-suna, which I suppose is better translated as oo than ou. If I saw ou in katakana, I would pronounce it oh-oo, and not ohh.

[The Emperor]

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