Re: was Punk Ekk, now Japanese

baka, I think, means "peasant". I've only heard it as
/baka/ from friends but then, again, there are dialect
and regional pronunciations. I have heard /kso/ "shit"
with only one vowel --Japanese laugh when they see
Americans end letters or sign cards with XOXO

--- "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

> Main article: Japanese dialects
> Dozens of dialects are spoken in Japan. The
> profusion
> is due to many factors, including the length of time
> the archipelago has been inhabited, its mountainous
> island terrain, and Japan's long history of both
> external and internal isolation. Dialects typically
> differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional
> morphology, vocabulary, and particle usage. Some
> even
> differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although
> this is uncommon.
> ================
> My elder daughter is friend with a Japanese-born
> girl,
> they usually teach one another Japanese and Chinese,
> and my daughter has explained me that
> baka "stupid" is pronounced as [baqa] by her friend,
> with some uvular stop close to Semitic q
> something that is not even hinted at in Japanese
> learn-books.
> I'm ready to believe Japanese is not at all *one*
> thing.
>
> Arnaud
> ===============
>
>
>

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