> Our handling is simple -- we don't yet. I don't know how to handle > things like that, or the previous example of Copenhagen in different > languages. Look at Naples -- that's not what Italins call it. Venice > is really bad -- no idea how English got it so mangled. Speaking of > Japanese, their word for Mexico (last time I checked) was taken from > the English MEKS-ih-ko and comes out as may-kee-shoo-ko rather than > the more more natural may-hee-ko if they had taken it straight from > Spanish.
Yeah, you get all kinds of crazy. For a long time I couldn't understand why 'computer' is in katakana (ie: taken from English) and 'calculus' isn't. As it turns out, the Japanese invented calculus independent of Newton and Leibniz. > As for ToKyo being two syllables ... I think it depends on how one > defines syllables. Ak a Japanese to pronounce three (san) slowly, and > it wil be two syllables, sa-n, "saw uhn". Ask for three hundred which > comes out as "sambyaku" because the "n" syllable changes sound when it > sounds better, and they will make quite a few syllables out of it, > such as (I am guessing now) saw-umm-bee-yaw-koo. To write Tokyo in > the proper furigana is probably something like toh-o-kee-yoh-o. Well, I don't think "n" is really a syllable. It's a sound, and it's the only part of the syllabary in Japanese that doesn't have a vowel. I'm not really convinced this is a syllable in reality. The proper way to write Tokyo for syllabary would be to-u-kyo-u I think, but I'm not certain. But really that's misleading because you're *not* supposed to pronounce the sounds twice, you just extend them, so they aren't really syllables either, they are just modifiers. > >> Kyoto is the same case as Tokyo (incidentally, the Chinese >> characters for those two cities are the same and just reversed in >> order!). > > Nope -- Tokyo is 東京, east capital. Kyoto is 京都, capital city. Kyo > is the same, to is different. Huh. I wonder how the hell I came up with that? I'm convinced I did not decide that on my own but that someone told me. And they told me I'm sure because I remember the story that went with it. Very strange. But you're absolutely right. Regards, daid
