We have a report from the fj.life.in-japan Dynamics Officer that CL has
exploded. Flight director confirms that:

>When I started taking 
>Japanese, the prof was constantly reminding me that spoken Japanese has 
>no umlauts.  My Chinese instructor, on the other hand, was impressed 
>that I could hit some of the stranger tones on the first try ... but, 
>they say that Midwesterners can nail Chinese sounds better than anyone 
>else in the world.

I can trace the ease with which I picked up Japanese pronunciation back to my
early childhood when I visited my father in south Florida, where there was heavy
Spanish. Subsequently, after four years of taking high school Spanish (the only
class, I might point out, in which I got straight A's) I had the vowels,
staccato enunciation, and the rolling R's (in case I ever get angry in Osaka)
wired.

All this ended up screwing with my native English pronunciation, which I suppose
is a good thing -- I grew up halfway between Baltimorese and Appalachian, so
when I was a kid I warshed my hayer with hart wooder in the zink before taking a
sharr. Nowadays, I've got a "bland, gray oatmeal" accent, which suits me fine.


-- 
"O!!!!!!"

The 2-Belo                           [the2beloATmsdDOTbiglobeDOTneDOTjp]
alt.flame  alt.fan.karl-malden.nose  alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk
meow                   a brimful of asha on a 45                    meow
meowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeow

"If you can't be good, be colorful." -- Pete Conrad