Anyone read Japanese? - Page 2 - Honda Prelude Forum

apocolipse269 · 02-03-2010, 08:52 PM

Well in this case it can and is only pronounced 'Ge-n', the 'kiri' reading of the second character means bird... so Mukiri would be a totally different word in of itself (written) and would hold different meaning. Keep in mind that Japanese spoken language only has 110 different sounds (compared to the 8000+ sounds we can make in English). The base alphabets (hiragana/katakana) which symbolize a single sound each are different than alphabet you're used to. English we use a single letter as part of a sound (1 syllable = 1 sound basically...) we put letters together to make a sound. Japanese alphabet is syllabalric, each character (not kanji the word characters, hira/katakana the sound letters) is exactly one syllable (hence the separate syllable for the 'n' thats by itself in 'mu-ge-n'). That being said, again japanese's 110 sounds to english's 8000+ theres an obvious gap in possible sounds and possible words, words can change based on context, or their kanji writing (kanji are usually set in their meaning, though they can often have more than one if read with the different sound, which is usually noted in published writings with tiny hiragana so folks in japan who cant read kanji can read their reading)

Shimee · 02-03-2010, 10:38 PM

Well that was fun to read. Always like learning about Japanese though I don't have time to learn it on my own, just random things I pick up. So I'm guessing the first character, mu, is sort of like a modifier. Since it means "no" or "zero", when paired the second character assumes the meaning of "limit" or "boundary" or something along those lines. But by itself "kiri" means bird.

I was really hoping MUKIRI meant "Infinite Bird" or something like that though.

apocolipse269 · 02-04-2010, 01:21 AM

Double the 2nd character and you get "infinite bird", red as "mugen kiri", pronounced "moo-geh-n key-ree"

S-LudeDan · 02-04-2010, 07:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by apocolipse269

Well in this case it can and is only pronounced 'Ge-n', the 'kiri' reading of the second character means bird... so Mukiri would be a totally different word in of itself (written) and would hold different meaning. Keep in mind that Japanese spoken language only has 110 different sounds (compared to the 8000+ sounds we can make in English). The base alphabets (hiragana/katakana) which symbolize a single sound each are different than alphabet you're used to. English we use a single letter as part of a sound (1 syllable = 1 sound basically...) we put letters together to make a sound. Japanese alphabet is syllabalric, each character (not kanji the word characters, hira/katakana the sound letters) is exactly one syllable (hence the separate syllable for the 'n' thats by itself in 'mu-ge-n'). That being said, again japanese's 110 sounds to english's 8000+ theres an obvious gap in possible sounds and possible words, words can change based on context, or their kanji writing (kanji are usually set in their meaning, though they can often have more than one if read with the different sound, which is usually noted in published writings with tiny hiragana so folks in japan who cant read kanji can read their reading)

cool, thanks for explaining it!

apocolipse269 · 02-04-2010, 08:54 PM

yeah...I majored in Linguistics.....Japanese was a fun side step. I still cant fully understand spoken Japanese too well, but I pick up a lot when watching Ninja Warrior and Unbeatable Banzuke hahaha