All-Purpose Nasuverse Fanfiction Thread

Consider the v/w thing in German, and how in some languages 'j' ir pronouned 'jay' and in other is pronunced 'ya' or 'ha'. Is 'Jose' pronounced 'Hose', 'Josie' or 'Yose'?

English has very complicated pronounciation.

Spanish... doesn't. Not really. We pronounce it as we read it. So Jose is pronounced... well, José.

Listening to the voice acting in the visual novel, the "-rou" in Shirou's name sounds very much more similar to "row as in rowing a boat" than to "raw".

Japanese actually has a very simple pronunciation system since a character is pronounced the same way in nearly every scenario. The hardest parts are any character that contains an "R" and telling when a sound is unvoiced since those rules are more like guidelines (I have heard many native Japanese speakers go back and forth between voicing a sound in a word and not. The easiest example to state is listing in to Shirou's seiyuu pronounce Sakura's name: Sometimes he voices the "U" and sometimes he doesn't).

It's similar to how the letter 'e' at the end of names is silent... except when it isn't. It's silent in 'George', 'James' and 'Theodore', but you pronounce it in 'Hermione' and 'Jaime'.

And that's also completely wrong. I've actually studied Japanese on top of listening to Japanese speakers frequently and paying attention to their pronunciation.

How is it wrong, scholar of an asian langauge and frequent listener of asian language native speakers, the asian language native speaker asks leadingly.

Incidentally, 'Jaime' is not English. It's the Spanish, and if I'm not mistaken, Portuguese form of James. And I'm also certain Hermione is a name of greek descent.

English steals everything from everywhere... Peter, James, Luke and John are technically Hebrew names, you know? As well as that name made famous by the nice Jewish carpenter who died horribly (and got better).

edited 30th Jun '15 12:15:02 AM by SCMof2814

We don't use Jesus, though. That's over by Jaime in the Spanish section.

Really now?

An unvoiced vowel and a silent one are actually two different things, the exact nature of the difference seemingly depending on the language (I only have examples of two). In English, a silent vowel only changes the pronunciation of a preceding vowel (at least in theory but rules regarding English pronunciation are almost pointless due to its nature). Take, for instance, the word "come". Pronunciation wise, you stop at the letter "M", you never make the mouth movements for the letter "E". When a sound in English (and even Japanese) is unvoiced, that means you do not vibrate your vocal cords in order to make the sound (examples of this in English include /p/ /t/ /k/ /s/ and /h/). Meanwhile, in Japanese, vowels are devoiced (at least in most dialects) when it comes between two unvoiced consonants (or an unvoiced consonant and the end of the word) baring certain exceptions. The way I was taught was that you still make the mouth movements for the vowel but you simply don't give voice to them. Normally, I'd have confirmed this by watching a native Japanese speaker but, given how quickly they usually talk and the fact that I still have to rely on subtitles, I have been unable to.

Regardless, I've heard Shirou's seiyuu voice and unvoice the "U" in Sakura's, I think even in the same sentence. There's also the phrase "Moshi moshi" where the first "I" in unvoiced yet the second one is.

Also, there's a difference between being a native speaker and actually studying the language. If there wasn't then there would be college courses on the English language in America and England and I'd bet everything I own on there being classes on Japanese in colleges/universities in Japan.

edited 30th Jun '15 12:34:18 AM by Zelenal

Not to be rude, but which one. Prior to Okinawan/Ryuukan being recognised as a separate, related language rather than an extremely outlying dialect, Japanese was classified as a language isolate. But even now that apart from Ryuukan (and copious borrowings from Classical Chinese), Japanese isn't really related to any other language on the face of the planet.

Which means that it really does have to be treated independently when it comes to analysing it linguistically.

(Fun fact: Prior to the aabove mentioned reclassification, Japanese was considered the largest language isolate still spoken. After that the distinction when toy one of its nearest geographical neighbours. Korean!)

Wait, hold on, so Japanese and Korean languages have nothing in common?

Apparently. Given how culturally isolated the Japanese were until fairly recently, that comes as no real surprise.

What made you think they were related?

edited 30th Jun '15 1:37:56 AM by Zelenal

Geographical closeness and presumed grammatical similarities.

Ku is never silent in Japanese, it's just that native Japanese speakers pronounce the u so briefly (compared to Europeans, at least) that to an unaccustomed listener, it's like the vowel is completely dropped.

I dunno. I mean the /k/ sound is unvoiced so it meets part of the requirements for it. Besides, that was just an example of it. I've heard it with other words using other characters ("moshi moshi" being the best example I can think of).

So, y'saying 'slike people on th' street s'times talk skippin' whole letters?

edited 30th Jun '15 4:13:58 AM by TheNobody

Absolutely. You nailed it.

Yeah, shi, su, and tsu are about the only other examples of this so-brief-it's-easily-mistaken-for-silent thing in Japanese.

If you say so.

I protest real life is totally like Warband.

Ride around all day killing Steppe Bandits for morale. Who needs rest?

Fuck yeah. Though personally, I'm more fond of slaughtering non-steppe bandits.

No horses to run with, y'see.

I'm not sure if I already mentioned this, but does anyone think a Tsukihime/Jojo/Hellsing crossover might actually work, what with all the vampires and crazy shit going on? I think the main problems is reconciling the types of vampires each series has and the fact that Stardust Crusaders is twenty years too early to properly sync up with the events of Tsukihime (Stone Ocean, on the other hand? Much easier to sync, probably). Otherwise, I can totally see Dio being one of Roa's previous incarnations, only for Dio to outright reject Roa out of sheer force of will, the Joestars working with the Church (and the Ripple being a known and widely-taught art amongst Executors), and Alucard and Arcueid having a love/hate thing of sorts going on.

I might write an example scene out of boredom.

edited 6th Jul '15 2:56:32 AM by Cronosonic

Plus Vlad wasn't a vampire in the Nasuverse, and Jack the Ripper wasn't a tiny chick in Jo Jo.

But those are minor differences I suppose.

edited 6th Jul '15 4:17:41 AM by Krika