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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: "V" in East Asian Languages
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Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 05:01:27 GMT
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In article <4k1p8t$gsh@agate.berkeley.edu>,
Coby (Jacob) Lubliner <coby@euler.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>In article <DpCzrn.8nu@midway.uchicago.edu>,
>Daniel von Brighoff <deb5@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>>	[v] is certainly absent from Korean and Japanese, where it 
>>is replaced by /p/ (phonetically, [p] or [b]) and /b/, respectively,
>>in foreign words (e.g. K. /piethunam/, J. /bietonamu/* "Vietnam").

Sorry, those should be <pethunam> and <betonamu> respectively.

>I know nothing about Korean, but Japanese has a representation for
>/v/, consisting of the katakana <u> character with nigori.  It is not
>used for words of English origin, where /b/ is used instead, but is
>used for words derived from Sanskrit, Latin, Italian and so on.  How
>the Japanese actually pronounce it is another matter; it probably
>depends on their familiarity with European languages.

I know this character exists, but how often is it used?  Kenkyusha's
(4th ed.) doesn't seem to use it at all, save in transliterating final
[v] in foreign names (e.g. Gen\eve, Tel Aviv).  Hadamitzky and Spahn
use it in transliterating Wien, but this is unequivocally <Uiin>, sans
nigori, in Kenkyusha's.  When was this diacritic introduced?  Is it
restricted to specialist literature?


-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
