The assorted finds of Artefact Publishing
Commenting on an article about the appalling lack of quality in corporate emails in the United States, yorkpaddy wrote: See what happens when you stop saying mass in Latin.
I’m glad it’s not just me who thinks like this. Indeed, just yesterday I was in a playground, and in the course of helping a friend with translation was engaged in conversation by a woman who thought that the only benefit of learning Latin is improved English. I should have said that, given many people’s language skills, that was sufficient reason for them to learn it. But instead I rambled a bit about great Latin literature until it was clear that her son was far more interested in the topic than she was. Of course, he wants to learn Japanese to be able to play Pokémon games as soon as they are released (which happens in Japan first). (And you have to love that acute accent on the e; this is surely a fancy rather than anything proper to the transliteration. The domain name with the acute is unregistered, too.)
Posted by jamie on December 8, 2004 18:05+13:00
You mean it might be pronounced as two syllables rather than three? Wow, I hadn’t considered that as a possibility.
Posted by: Jamie on December 10, 2004 12:51+13:00
Posted by: stephen on December 13, 2004 09:21+13:00
Posted by: Björn on March 15, 2005 01:21+13:00
I think the acute accent is just a way of ensuring that English speakers pronounce the word in a way that corresponds to the way the Japanese would pronounce it, always assuming that the Japanese also call them Pokemon. Otherwise a fair proportion of the people encountering the name for the first time would pronounce the first syllable like the English word “poke”.
In New Zealand, where Maori words are reasonably visible, English speakers might be more likely to get it right, but what about the poor benighted Americans?
Posted by: Michael on December 10, 2004 11:28+13:00