Re: Origin of 'hoomu'


"muchan" <qqn@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:XgKAe.294$cE1.54995@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
jwb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: 

In the '80s I was subtitling a TV program in which one of the characters
had a dog (I think that's what it was) named "UFO," but she called it
ユーホー rather than the proper ユーフォー her daughter always said.



A quarter of a century ago when we were briefly domociled in 松本 I
received a telephone call from someone in Fujitsu. The call went
to our landlady who called me to the phone. My wife was struck by
the way she said "Hujitsu".


(well, I see you wrote this as a sarcasm, but...)

She's correct, since in japanese it's /hu/. Mt.Fuji is /huji-san/...
Using "fu" for /hu/ in Japanese is a spelling convention of Hepburn's
system (and its deriveratives)...

If ふ used the same /h/ sound as はひへほ then surely ふぉ would be the same as ほ and ふぁ would be the same as は and ふぇ would be the same as へ and ふぃ would be the same as ひ. I don't think it can be the same sound.

.