That’s funny, because ‘niisan’ sounds like ‘big brother’ in Japanese. In English, words have strong stress and that completely screws up Japanese names (e.g. Hayashi, pronounced with no stress, comes out as haYAshi in English, or is that only American?).
Many people think that Japanese must be hard to pronounce, but it’s actually very easy. There are only 5 vowels and ‘virtually’ no stress. It’s not a tonal language like Chinese dialects. Actually, the relationship of Japanese to other languages is one of the great mysteries of linguistics. Last I’ve heard, some people thought it was related to Finish! I don’t know Finish, so I can’t vouch for that either way, but it’s easy to see language relationships where there are none.
Thank you for the information about Japanese. I need to know the pronunciation of some Japanese proper nouns in a Chinese to English translation assignment I’m doing.
Last I’ve heard, some people thought it was related to Finish! I don’t know Finish, so I can’t vouch for that either way, but it’s easy to see language relationships where there are none.
Another theory, IIRC, was that it was a mix between Altaic and Austronesian. I can see why it would be possible, the Ryukyu islands come very close to Taiwan, and Taiwanese Aboriginese speak languages of the Formosan branch of Austronesian. So, I could see ancient Austronesians island hopping up the Ryukyu chain into Japan.But, it’s unproven, so I wouldn’t hold my breat :).
It’s worth the risk of burning, to have a second chance…
Why is Japanese is not considered a tonal language? There are always correct ways and incorrect ways of pronouncing each sentence. I guess it’s a lot simpler than Chinese in that Japanese usually only alternates between two pitches, and also it’s rare for a wrong pitch to change the meaning, but you can always spot non-native speakers by it.
Regarding the original question, there are some situations where the ‘-h’ denotes a “u” character at the end of the name. For example, “Yoko” (as in Ono) is written as three characters - “yo u ko”. Yohkoh (name of a Japanese satellite) is written “yo u ko u”. But yes, the middle ‘h’ does seem arbitrary.
Given the error I recently introduced into another thread, take this with the appropriate grains of salt, but here goes:
I remember reading in Discover magazine that Japanese is most closely related to Korean. (Some Japanese don’t like to admit this.)
Korean, Finnish, and I think Hungarian are all distantly related. (I want to say the Ural-Altaic family, but I’ve been wrong before…)
This is explained by the Mongol hordes who swept through Asia and into Eastern Europe, leaving death, destruction, and unpronounceable verb forms in their wake.