Big in Japan: An Ode to Ramen (Part I)

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-04-2007 @ 1:34AM

Alex said...

Umm... actually, it is "ra"
Check these charts out:
http://www.tokyowithkids.com/fyi/japanese/hiragana/hiragana1.gif
http://ubiquitous.kaizendenki.com/japanese_images/Basic-Kana-Chart.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaji (you have to scroll down a bit)
And as far as I know (from my high school Japanese class last year with and actual Japanese teacher that lived in Japan a few years ago) Japanese people don't have an "L" or "R". The sound is something in between. Therefore, when they (native Japanese speakers that don't really speak English) try to say squirrel, it ends up coming out funny.

2-15-2008 @ 12:41AM

Dan Shier said...

Japanese was my 1st language... thus I don't need a hiragana chart...

I partially agree w/ the L/R mix thing, however to the average person, Japanese "R" sounds sound more like "L" sounds.

When translating into Romaji (Roman characters), it WOULD be spelt "Ra-me-n" HOWEVER, the point I was getting at was that phonetically, it is "La-me-n".

2-15-2008 @ 12:43AM

Dan Shier said...

And what I was trying to get at in the article was the bracketed pronunciation part... Ramen is spelt right, but when he had ramen in the brackets, as to how u pronounce it, he used R again... which is wrong.

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