on 2/20/01 4:52 PM, Philippe Trottier at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> If I remember right in my language study
> Ni Hon Go
> Go "language"
> Ni the "Japanese"
> Hon "land"
Hi all,
Just because I have a Japanese last name does not at all mean I am an
authority on anything Japan :-) Probably far from it (It is hard enough for
me to keep the proper mother tongue :-).
I post this only because I might contribute to satisfying the curiosity of
some PDMLers.
Philippe is right on above (well, almost) except "Ni" (pronounced in a few
other ways too) means the sun. "Hon" is like the "centre", "source" or
perhaps "land" as Philippe said. Nihon or Nippon is very much about the
country of rising sun (what a big claim !).
I like the sound of Nihon but at some point, I think the Japanese government
adopted "Nippon" as the formal pronunciation of Japan in Japanese (reasoning
that Nihon sounds rather weak ! and difficult to pronounce by some people
:-). But people tend to say "Nihon-Go" rather than "Nippon-Go" (both are
right), so it all depends, I guess.
Perhaps someone can correct it if I am wrong (and if Chris cares that much
about the pronunciation of countries in his list :-)
My apologies for littering the space.
Cheers,
Ken
-
This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe,
go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to
visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
