The last samurai how good/bad is it?

[SnowFire]

Well, while we're threadjacking, I have a question for someone lower on the food chain that Drake should be able to answer. I know that somehow, the Japanese have the same sound for "r" and "l" because I see r's and l's used interchangeably in different translations of the same stuff. Or something like that. How does it sound in Japanese? Well, as best you can express over text, I suppose. "r" and "l" don't strike me as being particularly similar sounds, although it kinda works when soft rather than hard I guess.

[Drake Tungsten]

Well, while we're threadjacking, I have a question for someone lower on the food chain that Drake should be able to answer. I know that somehow, the Japanese have the same sound for "r" and "l" because I see r's and l's used interchangeably in different translations of the same stuff. Or something like that. How does it sound in Japanese? Well, as best you can express over text, I suppose. "r" and "l" don't strike me as being particularly similar sounds, although it kinda works when soft rather than hard I guess.

From my experience, SnowFire, the Japanese use a sound that is somewhere between an "l" and an "r". Sometimes it sounds like an "l" to me, sometimes it sounds like an "r" and sometimes it even sounds a little like a "d". It must be some sound that I can't hear properly, so my brain links it to the closest sound I can think of.

Japanese honestly can't tell the difference between "r" and "l", so words like "light" and "right, "liver" and "river" and even "laughed" and "raft" sound identical to them if they have no experience with other languages. Makes for some rather humorous exchanges with my students.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
This is a bit off-topic, but MtG might have the answer to this question...

OK, Japanese only has one syllable ending in a consonant (n), right? So what's the deal with romanized Japanese words that have syllables ending in "m"? I used to think it was just a mistake on the part of Westerners, like calling the movie "Yojimbo" instead of "Yojinbo", but it happens over here as well and you'd figure the Japanese would fix the mistake if there was one. Why do I go to Namba-eki in Osaka, not Nanba? Why is there a Nipponbashi in Osaka, but a Nippombashi in Tokyo? Was there an "m" sound that dropped out of the language like "ye"? Or is it just some remnant of bad romanization during the Occupation that hasn't ever been fixed?

It's a combination of things - there has been a strong merger of dialects to a sort of "educated Tokyo" standard since WW2, but romanization of traditional names tends to reflect historical local dialect. The other issue is the fact that the pronounciation of Japanese phonemes is in many cases not exactly the same as english approximations. One example is the "o" that signifies direct objects - it used to be phonetically a soft "wo" sound, but is essentially a pure "o" now.

The "m" and "n" sound difference is more analogous to the "su" sound, than the "ye" phoneme. "su" is more like a drawn out sss in verb suffixes - imasu, tabemasu, etc., compared to sugoi, etc.

It's a less extreme form of the ha-ba-pa type of aspirated transformation, and very similar to the ha-hi-fu-he-ho, except that it's governed both by dialect and the combination of phonemes.

An "n" sound before certain syllables, particularly the ha, ba and pa series of syllables, is phonetically almost halfway between an English "m" and "n" and is quite a bit different from the intermediate "n" in words like kansai, kinki, shinkansen, etc. That "n" as a separate syllable is definitely distinct from the harder (essentially identical to English) "n" sound in the na ni nu ne no syllables.

It's not bad romanization, it's an attempt to more accurately render the actual pronunciation, but in many cases, the softening of dialect differences has all but eliminated those differences in modern pronunciation.

[Drake Tungsten]

Thanks.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Bond completed his mission, didn't he?

Yea, he banged the hell out of that Japanese agent.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ned


This may be Tom Cruise's best performance.

I'm fainting with damn praise over here.

[Zero]

MtG, do you google everything you post?

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'm fainting with damn praise over here.

Well Cruise was pretty damned good on "Born on the Fourth of July"

[Ned]

Originally posted by Sikander


I'm fainting with damn praise over here.

The question is whether Tom has extended himself into the oscar realm. His performance was very good, but it still may not be among the top five. Just off the top of my head, I think Sean Penn in Mystic River and Kevin Costner in Open Range had better performances.

[Dis]

and Ken Wantanabe dammit!! He did a great job in that movie.

[Grandpa Troll]

Saw this movie last night with my son and have to tell you was extremely pleased!

I thought Cruise delivered a fine job

I myself having studied martial arts found it a wee bit hard to conceive Cruise's character not only picking up but elevating himself to a point worthy of competing with a master Samaruai

But that only paled in comparison to the mere "implication" that Cruise and the widowed wife of the samaurai he took the life of maybe could have a potential life together..

The pure Japanese code of Honor would certainly have prevented such an idea from coming to fruition


BUT..still I enjoyed the movie here...

Loved how Cruise took all the Japanese henchmen...enroute to rescue the Samurai chief under house arrest!

Peace

Grandpa Troll

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Zero
MtG, do you google everything you post?

No. I lived in Japan, studied it's history and still speak and read the language passably well.

I still have about a hundred books in Japanese on my office shelf behind me.

[Drake Tungsten]

Did you ever take any of the Japanese language proficiency tests, MtG? If so, what level did you end up at?

Knowing you, you were probably at i-kyu or something...

[MrFun]

Damn -- I thought I was going to pass this movie over, but now I GOTTA GO SEE IT.

Along with LOTR III when it comes out.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Did you ever take any of the Japanese language proficiency tests, MtG? If so, what level did you end up at?

Knowing you, you were probably at i-kyu or something...

The only proficiency test I took was to go to NE Honshu in January (Sendai and Matsushima) where the only thing in English was the romanization of Sendai in the JNR station signs. Snow was knee deep on the ground, so it was "communicate or die."

At the time I was there, Japanese speaking gaijin were uncommon in Tokyo and virtually nonexistent in most areas outside the major commercial cities, so I didn't even know there was any form of organized proficiency tests for the language itself.