Re: [Epic] More painting of small details

From: Bayani R Caes <bayanic_at_...>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 11:08:44 +0100

This is going pretty far off topic, but I feel I should mention a few
things, seeing as how I started this thread....

Sauron1 writes:
> >Sauron1 writes; Mark, can you get the English-Japanese translation of
> >"SAURON1" to work. I have a new Bainlord Titan under construction and
> >it needs a name. I tried the suggested service but it din not give me
> >a name.
> > sauron1

Sauron probably does not have a proper Japanese translation. However,
there is a Japanese set of characters called katakana for words borrowed
from other languages. Getting the "aw" sound of "Sauron" might best be
approximated with "sa" or "so". The last three characters will be
katakana "ro", katakana "n", and kanji "ichi".

Oki writes:
> Hmmm, my Mandarin was never my strong point. But the first thing that
> came to my mind was "Chao Ren", for Uber(super)-man. Pretty cool isn't
> it ? But this is from a guy who screw up his primary school Mandarin
> :(

(Sorry, off topic reference that I think exactly two other people will
get)
"The problem with being ubermensch is that there are no uberchicks."
 -Dave White's "Anarchy Bears"

Chris writes:
> Mandarin is Chinese, Sauron1 is looking for Japanese. I
> haven't taken Japanese since elementary school, but I seem to remember
> there being some differences.

Kanji is Japanese taken right from Chinese. Unlike Chinese (I may be
wrong on this one; in fact, Mark will probably correct me on this),
Japanese has a set of characters called kana that is strictly phonetic,
i.e. a kana character is always pronounced one way. Kanji are symbolic,
i.e. a kanji character can have multiple pronounciations but still carry
the same general meaning. For example, the kanji character for "ichi"
can also be pronounced "hito" or "i", but will still mean one.

I don't know the history of the use of kanji in Japanese, but it is
taken from Chinese. That's why in the original post, I said, "if you
can't find a friend who knows Japanese, a friend who knows Chinese
should be okay too." It's just that I know Japanese and not Chinese.

Chris continues:
> I think you may have some troubles finding a direct
> translation; the best you can probably hope for is a phonetic
> approximation. For instance, my name in class was "Kuh Re
> Su" (Chris), with the last syllable almost swallowed it was so quiet.

Rigid Japanese syllable structure will cause borrowed words to end with
a slight "u" or "o" sound. It also makes Japanese condusive to poetry
styles like haiku. ^_^

-BC
And just think--I got a C in Linguistics....
Received on Wed Aug 13 1997 - 10:08:44 UTC