brief life update, and a random question about Japanese

[edenfalling]

Intended to sleep in today and run errands in the afternoon -- it being my day off -- but GS is apparently sick with a fever, etc., and PM (the manager) called me at about 9am to ask if I could cover for him. So I was at work from 1-6pm, and there went my lovely naptime. *pouts*

On the bright side, at least one of my tax refunds seems to have come in, because otherwise there is no way to explain the sudden jump in my checking account balance. Yay! Now I can pay my rent for April and May, which was, for a while, looking like it might be damn near impossible.

I really need a better-paying job.

...

Do any people out there need editing advice on essays and whatnot, and if so, are you willing to pay me? I'm actually a very good editor -- I'm exhaustively thorough -- even though it drives me batty if I indulge too often.

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In a completely unrelated question, does Japanese ever use the consonant combination TS in front of any vowel other than U? Because I see the syllable TSU a lot, but I've never seen TSA, TSE, TSI, TSO, TSAO, etc.

ETA: Thank you to everyone who explained pieces of the Japanese syllabic system! (That stuff about appending Y syllables is absolutely fascinating, for example.)

Comments

Re: *delurks*

[supplanter.livejournal.com]

Also "ji", I think.  (I hear "fu" pronounced kind of like "fhu", kind of like how the 'r' sound is really between 'r' and 'l', so does that one count as being strange?)

Re: *delurks*

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

As near as I've been able to figure, the 'fu' kana is pronounced with the lips and mouth in the same position as the English 'F', but the, er, breath and vocalization of an 'H' sound - ie, that part doesn't change between the five 'H' kana.

The other one that I'm a little proud of myself for figuring out is the Japanese 'R' sound - it requires convincing your tongue to pronounce an 'L' and your vocal chords to pronounce an 'R' at the same time... Interestingly, more gutteral (ie, English-like) pronounciations are apparently associated with Yakuza. Compare, say, Gamabunta and Kakashi sometime...

Ja, -n

Re: *delurks*

[asprosdrakos.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite parts of Japanese is how much speaking styles can differ from person to person, depending on gender and status and personal choice. While in Japan, I get told my speech style is very otoko-rashii, or boy-like, because of how I chose to end words with 'e' usually, instead of 'oi', for example.

On Yakuza Slang:
yachimae - equiv. to korose, or I'll kill you
yabai - that's bad
ending things with 'e' - uruse, although that bleed into command form, which is considered yakuza-ish anyway.

...and yes, I just asked my Japanese host family what Yakuza speech was like.

It makes reading manga in Japanese a lot more interesting, I think, because a lot of that doesn't translate well, or really at all.

Oh god the "r" and "l" sounds. I've had friends who've done JET who've spent classes and more on that pronounciation difference.

Re: *delurks*

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

Wak! Almost forgot this -

Except for the pure vowels (a, e, u, i, o) and, IIRC, the 'Y' and 'R' lines, all of the various kana can appear in either voiced or unvoiced modes - that is, an unvoiced 'ta' will sound and be written as exactly that, and a voiced 'ta' will have a mark at its upper right corner that looks damn near exactly like a Western quotation mark (") and be pronounced 'da'. Likewise, 'ka' --> 'ga', 'sa' --> 'za', and 'ha' can be voiced either normally, as 'ba', or with a little circle instead of the quotes, in which case it becomes 'pa'. 'Chi' and 'shi', for no reason I understand, are both voiced as 'ji', and I have no clue what 'tsu' comes out as.

It's not quite as complicated as it sounds, honest!

Ja, -n

Re: *delurks*

[deralte.livejournal.com]

'tsu' with the quotation mark comes out as 'zu'.

Re: *delurks*

[asprosdrakos.livejournal.com]

'zu' is a weird one, in that both 'su' and 'tsu,' when given the dakuon (which I think is the name of the quotation mark) will give the 'zu' sound. I've seen 'tsu' with dakuon romanized as 'dzu' as well as 'zu' - my electronic dictionary, for example, only accepts 'dzu' as an input while things like...'sakurazukamori', for example, are romanized to a 'zu' spelling in english despite the fact that it is spelt in Japanese with as tsu + dakuon

Re: *delurks*

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Interesting. Might this have something to do with the otherwise-quite-puzzling disagreements over the proper romanization of the title of 'Kannazuki no Miko/Kannaduki no Miko'?

Thanks! -n