<b>My observations on Japanese:</b>
- Like Tamil (and Telugu, Kannada) and Samskritam, has a general tendency to end on vowels. Syllabic language.
- I've noticed a lot of names that sound like/sound similar to Indian names. Muroga, Maaya (might be a Buddhist name), Ashtaka (spelled Ashitaka, but they pronounced it Ashtaka) and more
- Some Japanese people - like Bengali and Tamil people do - turn 'v' into 'b'. (Many letters that are 'b' in German have become 'v' in Dutch. An example off the top of my head is DE glauBen -> NL geloVen.)
- Japanese is the only non-European language I can recall where people sound (some) 'u' as the Dutch and Germans do. They also have the 'u' sound we know (as in HindU)
- Also, other than Japanese I know of no language with the English 'w' sound. Germans and Dutch don't have the English 'w'. In NL and DE they pronounce 'w' as the English do the 'v'. And the Dutch pronounce the 'v' as the French do, and the Germans alternate sounding it between the Dutch pronunciation of 'v' and an 'f'. (That is, in German, Vater is pronounced either with a V as in Dutch - which is the usual case; or as Fater.)
- Japanese has an 'h' sound like Samskritam and consequently Hindi. Some Japanese pronounce this as something close to an 'f' but a very strangely beautiful 'f'-like sound it is, I must say. Actually, having heard it again, it's somewhere half-way between an 'f' and an 'h'.
However, it seems <b>they have no 'f'</b> sound officially although they are able to make something <i>like</i> it. (It's like they don't have an L officially, but some Japanese consistently sound an L whilst others sound an R, whilst yet others randomly sound Ls and Rs):
http://www.commelec.forces.gc.ca/pub/history.doc
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Katakana and Harigana are Japanese phonetic writing systems. There are 71 individual characters each representing a simple Japanese phonetic sound and 36 digraphs representing single syllables. Groupings of characters could approximate most Japanese and many other language words. Note that there is no "L" and no "F" sound.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And here's a Japanese person (with Roman-sounding handle 'Flaminius') writing on his language during some otherwise 'IE' discussion:
http://www.yourdictionary.com/cgi-bin/agor...;num=1127550628
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->It does not matter how [ph] and [f] sound similar for English speakers. Labio-dental and bilabial are not allophones in Japanese since there has been no [f] in that language.
I repeat: no [f] in Japanese
be it the result of "p to f change" or a legacy phoneme.
If you stick to your point that [ph] and [f] are allophones, could I prevail upon you to ask for online materials that point to the existence of [f] in historical Japanese (some foreign words are incorporated into Modern Japanese with their legacy [f]s)?
Nitpickeous Flaminius<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->And here's the same Japanese person Flaminius again, explaining their 'f'-like sound:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>on Sep 24th, 2005, 5:49pm, brian_costello wrote:</b>
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->[P to f chnage] also occured in your native language, Japanese.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Don't expect me to tell you everytime that the sound represented by "f" in Japanese is bilabial fricative, whereas those in your other examples are labio-dental.
And again, what is your point?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->So the nice sound the Japanese make is what's called 'bilabial fricative' is it... Whatever, sounds <i>very</i> lovely.
<b>F P thing in some other languages:</b>
http://www.dannychai.com/short/short3.html
It states:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->there's <b>no f sound in Korean</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Apparently the same is the case in Turkmenistan, and in one or more Indonesian tongues:
http://home.unilang.org/main/forum/viewtop...7a9334c27748cf2
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Bahho wrote:
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>In Turkmen there's no F sound</b> for example <b>they use P instead</b>. Thank God,I haven't mixed up these two yet I don't know whether the Turkmen understand a P instead of an F when they hear something foreign.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is very <b>common in Indonesian</b>, so that some people say and write:
Pebruari
Nopember
And saying poto and pèlem for foto and film is pretty common.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Afghan case. (Some?) Afghan tribes pronounce P as F, because they don't have 'f'. I've been told how those Afghans in TSP are made fun of for not being able to pronounce Urdu properly.
http://blogs.cricinfo.com/pakspin/archives..._the_rescue.php
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Sahibzada Shahid Ali Khan Apridi (there is <b>no "f" sound in proper Pushto</b>) or Shahid Afridi if you prefer, <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Also, wackypedia on the "Pashto language" says about this "IE->Indo-Iranian->Iranian->SE Iranian" language: <b>no f nor h</b> in this IE language.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The sounds /f/, /q/, /h/ are present only in loanwords. <b>Less educated</b> speakers tend to replace them with [p], [k] and nothing, respectively.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So wacky thinks it's "less educated" to not be able to pronounce sounds that don't occur naturally in one's own language....
(Regarding Q there should be no difficulty - it is generally just the k sound anyway, so that's no probs. It's when writing Chinese with Roman letters that Q sounds different: it often has the 'ch' sound.)
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/february/pashto.html ("Languages of the World is brought to you by the <i>National Virtual Translation Center</i>")
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Pashto, also known as Afghan, Pushto, or Pashtu, is a member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by over 2.7 million people in Afghanistan, most of whom are ethnic Pashtuns who constitute over a third of the country's population. <b>In Pakistan, Pashto is spoken by 9.7 million ethnic Pashtuns who live on the other side of the border with Afghanistan</b> (Ethnologue).
[...]
<b>In Pakistan, Pashto has no official status and is not taught in schools. Pashtun children are educated in Urdu.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Now that's real language suppression, unlike the fictive Japhetic-Hamitic (Oryan-Dravidian) one of "Samskritam must have suppressed Tamil because my missionary boss tells me so...".
At the bottom of that page, there's a link to: "Voice of America broadcasts in Pashto" Meh? And there's BBC news in Pashto too.
- Like Tamil (and Telugu, Kannada) and Samskritam, has a general tendency to end on vowels. Syllabic language.
- I've noticed a lot of names that sound like/sound similar to Indian names. Muroga, Maaya (might be a Buddhist name), Ashtaka (spelled Ashitaka, but they pronounced it Ashtaka) and more
- Some Japanese people - like Bengali and Tamil people do - turn 'v' into 'b'. (Many letters that are 'b' in German have become 'v' in Dutch. An example off the top of my head is DE glauBen -> NL geloVen.)
- Japanese is the only non-European language I can recall where people sound (some) 'u' as the Dutch and Germans do. They also have the 'u' sound we know (as in HindU)
- Also, other than Japanese I know of no language with the English 'w' sound. Germans and Dutch don't have the English 'w'. In NL and DE they pronounce 'w' as the English do the 'v'. And the Dutch pronounce the 'v' as the French do, and the Germans alternate sounding it between the Dutch pronunciation of 'v' and an 'f'. (That is, in German, Vater is pronounced either with a V as in Dutch - which is the usual case; or as Fater.)
- Japanese has an 'h' sound like Samskritam and consequently Hindi. Some Japanese pronounce this as something close to an 'f' but a very strangely beautiful 'f'-like sound it is, I must say. Actually, having heard it again, it's somewhere half-way between an 'f' and an 'h'.
However, it seems <b>they have no 'f'</b> sound officially although they are able to make something <i>like</i> it. (It's like they don't have an L officially, but some Japanese consistently sound an L whilst others sound an R, whilst yet others randomly sound Ls and Rs):
http://www.commelec.forces.gc.ca/pub/history.doc
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Katakana and Harigana are Japanese phonetic writing systems. There are 71 individual characters each representing a simple Japanese phonetic sound and 36 digraphs representing single syllables. Groupings of characters could approximate most Japanese and many other language words. Note that there is no "L" and no "F" sound.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And here's a Japanese person (with Roman-sounding handle 'Flaminius') writing on his language during some otherwise 'IE' discussion:
http://www.yourdictionary.com/cgi-bin/agor...;num=1127550628
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->It does not matter how [ph] and [f] sound similar for English speakers. Labio-dental and bilabial are not allophones in Japanese since there has been no [f] in that language.
I repeat: no [f] in Japanese
be it the result of "p to f change" or a legacy phoneme.
If you stick to your point that [ph] and [f] are allophones, could I prevail upon you to ask for online materials that point to the existence of [f] in historical Japanese (some foreign words are incorporated into Modern Japanese with their legacy [f]s)?
Nitpickeous Flaminius<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->And here's the same Japanese person Flaminius again, explaining their 'f'-like sound:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>on Sep 24th, 2005, 5:49pm, brian_costello wrote:</b>
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->[P to f chnage] also occured in your native language, Japanese.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Don't expect me to tell you everytime that the sound represented by "f" in Japanese is bilabial fricative, whereas those in your other examples are labio-dental.
And again, what is your point?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->So the nice sound the Japanese make is what's called 'bilabial fricative' is it... Whatever, sounds <i>very</i> lovely.
<b>F P thing in some other languages:</b>
http://www.dannychai.com/short/short3.html
It states:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->there's <b>no f sound in Korean</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Apparently the same is the case in Turkmenistan, and in one or more Indonesian tongues:
http://home.unilang.org/main/forum/viewtop...7a9334c27748cf2
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Bahho wrote:
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>In Turkmen there's no F sound</b> for example <b>they use P instead</b>. Thank God,I haven't mixed up these two yet I don't know whether the Turkmen understand a P instead of an F when they hear something foreign.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is very <b>common in Indonesian</b>, so that some people say and write:
Pebruari
Nopember
And saying poto and pèlem for foto and film is pretty common.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Afghan case. (Some?) Afghan tribes pronounce P as F, because they don't have 'f'. I've been told how those Afghans in TSP are made fun of for not being able to pronounce Urdu properly.
http://blogs.cricinfo.com/pakspin/archives..._the_rescue.php
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Sahibzada Shahid Ali Khan Apridi (there is <b>no "f" sound in proper Pushto</b>) or Shahid Afridi if you prefer, <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Also, wackypedia on the "Pashto language" says about this "IE->Indo-Iranian->Iranian->SE Iranian" language: <b>no f nor h</b> in this IE language.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The sounds /f/, /q/, /h/ are present only in loanwords. <b>Less educated</b> speakers tend to replace them with [p], [k] and nothing, respectively.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So wacky thinks it's "less educated" to not be able to pronounce sounds that don't occur naturally in one's own language....
(Regarding Q there should be no difficulty - it is generally just the k sound anyway, so that's no probs. It's when writing Chinese with Roman letters that Q sounds different: it often has the 'ch' sound.)
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/february/pashto.html ("Languages of the World is brought to you by the <i>National Virtual Translation Center</i>")
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Pashto, also known as Afghan, Pushto, or Pashtu, is a member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by over 2.7 million people in Afghanistan, most of whom are ethnic Pashtuns who constitute over a third of the country's population. <b>In Pakistan, Pashto is spoken by 9.7 million ethnic Pashtuns who live on the other side of the border with Afghanistan</b> (Ethnologue).
[...]
<b>In Pakistan, Pashto has no official status and is not taught in schools. Pashtun children are educated in Urdu.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Now that's real language suppression, unlike the fictive Japhetic-Hamitic (Oryan-Dravidian) one of "Samskritam must have suppressed Tamil because my missionary boss tells me so...".
At the bottom of that page, there's a link to: "Voice of America broadcasts in Pashto" Meh? And there's BBC news in Pashto too.