Re: 'Tefu-tefu' read as 'Choo-choo'


Zhen Lin wrote:
> Bart Mathias wrote:
> > My guess is they weren't diphthongs originally--they might have even
> > been "felt" by Japanese speakers as "owu" and "eyi"--then went through a
> > brief stage as diphthongs, which Japanese, and Korean, abhor. Sam
> > Martin (and everyone else?) apparently disagrees with me on this; he
> > holds that words like こい in NJ *are* diphthongs.
>
> N.J.? Nara Japanese? こい as in 来い? I thought 来い was a more modern
> development... I'm confused...
>
> Anyway. Interestingly, in modern Mandarin - there is no [o:] or [e:] but
> there are [7U] ([7] = close-mid back unrounded vowel, similar to [@])
> and [eI] (analysed as [@] nucleus + [u] coda for [7U] and [@] + [i] for
> [eI]). Modern Cantonese also has no [o:] or [e:] (but it has [O:], [O] =
> open-mid back rounded vowel) - it has instead [ou] and [ei].

I have an off-topic question about Chinese pronunciation.

A Cantonese speaker told me that if you read poems from Tang dynasty in
Cantonese, a rhyme pattern can be heard.

Is that true?

Also doesn't the Japanese ON-YOMI sound closer to Cantonese, than to
Mandarin?

.

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