About Millia 639 (Miria) in Macross 7

[Keith]

I think part of it has to do with the ability to say things, and the willingness to say things. Most english words that get mangled in Japanese have to do with their accept not really allowing for porper pronunciation, than a lack of will to do so. While English speakers mangling other languages has more to do with an unwillingness to learn how other dialects work, but even that is a large generalization.

Personally, what gets to me more is Hollywood's habbit of casting random asians for specific culture roles, and not carring who's actually from what country.

[David Hingtgen]

Is that really different than casting a French guy as a Russian, etc?

[Keith]

Yeah, I think it is. Though on par with casting white guys in makup as native americans, or Sean Connery as everything under the sun, including Russians.

Edited December 7, 2007 by Keith

[David Hingtgen]

Ah yes, Sean Connery. He can play any ethnicity it seems...

[Keith]

You know, Sean Connery was originally going to play Ice Cube's role in Friday.

[Zinjo]

I think part of it has to do with the ability to say things, and the willingness to say things. Most english words that get mangled in Japanese have to do with their accept not really allowing for porper pronunciation, than a lack of will to do so. While English speakers mangling other languages has more to do with an unwillingness to learn how other dialects work, but even that is a large generalization.

Personally, what gets to me more is Hollywood's habbit of casting random asians for specific culture roles, and not carring who's actually from what country.

I've found that is more an American thing. European countries and internationally exposed nations tend to be more respectful of other languages, probably because they find themselves exposed to it a lot.

Ever hear how "raison d'être" is pronounced in the Ergo Proxy dub? It's very much phonetically spoken without any of the French accents that distinguish the word in it's original pronounciation. "Hikaru" is another example from the ADV SDF Macross dub. You listen to Mari pronounce the name and then the American cast say the same name and the two are noticably different.

Edited December 8, 2007 by Zinjo

[eugimon]

I've found that is more an American thing. European countries and internationally exposed nations tend to be more respectful of other languages, probably because they find themselves exposed to it a lot.

Ever hear how "raison d'être" is pronounced in the Ergo Proxy dub? It's very much phonetically spoken without any of the French accents that distinguish the word in it's original pronounciation. "Hikaru" is another example from the ADV SDF Macross dub. You listen to Mari pronounce the name and then the American cast say the same name and the two are noticably different.

uhm... that's a huge generalization. Lets just all remember that there is one important european country that has laws in effect that are designed to protect their language from foreign influence and that using too many american words in things like magazines can result in fines...

Anyways, I've noticed that many people change the way they pronounce words to fit the language they're speaking. I have several japanese speaking friends, who when speaking to english speakers and pronounce words like "katana" and "akira" in the stereotypical american way: KAY-tana or ah-kee-rah. Similarly, when I speak korean and useenglish words, I say those words with a korean accent.

[Sumdumgai]

None of you have obviously lived in Paris then. Can't speak English there, can't speak French there (if you're foreign and have a distinct accent). Almost everyone gets pissed at you... Actually almost everyone is pissed period. Not all, but a lot of Parisiens are really anal about people "butchering" their language, particularly if it's with an American-English accent.

The ability to hear and pronounce words in other languages is formed as a small child. I forgot what age you have until. In the early years, the more languages you're constantly exposed to the more languages you'll be able to hear and possibly pronounce later. The best example is the eskimo "e" in particular words. Adults who haven't heard the eskimo language spoken as an infant couldn't discern that particular sound. When they tested with infants that were exposed to the language, versus those that weren't, the ones who were exposed to the language could hear it. They found this out by exposing some toy when the "e" was going to be pronounced. The ones that could hear it, would look to where the toy would be exposed, expectantly. The infants who weren't exposed to the eskimo language before did show that expectation.

[eugimon]

yeah, you have months after you're born to be exposed to other languages. If you were, then your brain learns to associate those sounds with language and your brain maps accordingly but if you're not, your brain just doesn't get wired for it. One of the reasons it's hard for most people to pick up a new language.

[sketchley]

It's not learning languages per se that Sumdumgai is saying, it's learning sounds in another language that are not in your native language. The age is somewhere in the early onset of puberty (11 to 15 or thereabouts), and coincides roughly with the mind's analytical centers activated. After that, most people are aware of how much they must learn when studying a foreign language, and that in turn makes it that much more difficult because they start building mental walls. Youths younger then that age tend to think along lines like "my friend can say that word/phrase, I'm going to do it too," and are not really aware that they are learning a foreign language, let alone the scope of the language they are communicating in.

As you speak Korean, Eugimon, I can provide a nice example from personal experience: 지 and 치. In English, they are romanized as ji and chi, but whenever I hear a native speaker say them, they sound like ch and ch. As you can probably guess, I started learning Korean long after that magic age where the brain pathways harden. However, harden doesn't mean unchangeable. When I lived in Korea, I could distinguish between the two sounds, however after not living in Korea for 6 years, I lost that ability. I'm pretty sure that if I go and live in Korea again, I'll relearn how to hear the difference in the two.

Of course, another way to look at it is brain scans of multilingual people - those that were raised from birth in a multilingual environment tend to have a 95 to 99% overlap in the area of the brain used while speaking the different languages that they know. People who learn after the magic age tend to have only a 15 to 25% overlap, with the majority of the newly learned language outside of the main language(s) (tends to look like a C shape around the main language(s), with a larger clump in the middle; at least from what I've seen).

Of course, it's not all doom and gloom. Practice, as in all things, makes perfect. The more you practice, the more your brain is rewired, and using that non-native language becomes easier. It just takes time.

[eugimon]

actually, there was a recent study... if you haven't been exposed to different languages by 2 years, your brain doesn't really map foreign sounds as "words". By the 10th month, babies are already distinguishing which sound combinations are important. This goes to what Sumdumgai was saying. A baby only hearing korean will not learn to hear the "z" sound as important or differentiate "l" and "r". Just like, as you pointed out, english speakers are likely to pick up the nuances in korean. This also goes to why so many chinese have perfect pitch (some studies say as much as 95% as opposed to the opposite ratio for european language speakers).

When they took brain scans of infants who were exposed to multiple languages their brain activity was different. Babies from multi-lingual homes could properly identify various sounds and word groupings as "language" while babies from mono-lingual homes could not. Foreign language words/sounds/word groupings were just "sounds".

As for learning languages later in life, of course you are correct Sketchly. But some people have a gift for languages and some people don't. It does invovle rewiring your brain and training your ear to pick up new sounds. I have a friend who works for the US Air Force as an analyst and she has a gift for languages, she can pretty much become fluent after 6 months of consistent exposure and she's able to "pick up" languages from asia and europe with similar ease.

[sketchley]

As I am less familiar with language learning pre-2 years of age, I will defer to what you said. But I have this to add - language learning begins pre-birth. The sound of the mother's and father's voices are heard inside of the womb, and at least when it comes to English, or other languages where content words are stressed more than function words, the infant will have learned to recognize content words by the time they are born. Of course, after birth the infant still has to learn how to react to those content words, but that's entirely different from language acquisition.

What I did write about is post-2 years of age. And the rule of thumb is that if a child is not exposed to nor attempts to say a sound not in their native language by the time they hit that change, they will never be able to reproduce that sound perfectly later. Of course, with a lot of practice it is possible, and being exposed to the sound and saying it is said to be only once or for a limited duration, not for months or years.

As for the language learning brain... there is a unique term for it, but I can remember it at the moment (Language Learning Device?) - I wish I had that. It'd make my life a lot easier. Mind you, I think it may only be applicable to spoken language, as written language takes on a whole new dimension; especially for languages that use different systems of writing than the one you natively speak!

[eugimon]

yeah, this is true, babies begin to learn, differentiate sounds and even tastes in womb.

"polyglot" is the term for someone who knows multiple languages and i hear it used to describe people who pick up languages more rapidly than normal. There's another term: hyperpolyglot! For someone who speaks more than 6 languages.

My wife is like this actually, she speaks: local chinese dialect, tagalog, madarin, english and some spanish and russian. She learned english when she was twelve and she learned russian in her mid twenties in preperation for a mission trip to kazikstan.

The wikipedia.org entry for polyglots is actually pretty interesting. It lists some of the more impressive hyperpolyglots, people who speak 50 different languages!

[sketchley]

That's the first time that I've heard either term. Where I come from, most people say multilingual; but that term doesn't include any hint of how the languages have been acquired.

Though, the term I was thinking of was not so much about the person, but about the part of the brain present in polyglots, but lacking in other people.

[eugimon]

That's the first time that I've heard either term. Where I come from, most people say multilingual; but that term doesn't include any hint of how the languages have been acquired.

Though, the term I was thinking of was not so much about the person, but about the part of the brain present in polyglots, but lacking in other people.

It's the "broca's area" that is different in polyglots from people who only speak one language. It's not that polyglots have it, but that it is structured differently. There's also the Geschwind-Galaburda cluster which may also be linked to other other neurological differences like a propensity for left-handedness and gifts in arts/mathematics, and other things.

check out the wiki article, it's where I got the above information.

[Isamu test pilot]

Eugimon and Sketchley I am learning a lot with all the info you are takling about, thank you

[lord_breetai]

A combination of sources. The "Lynn Minmay" spelling didn't actually appear until after she became an idol, while the "Lin Minmei" spelling was indeed on her door. Reference matrials regarding her family & Kaifun also use the "Lin/Linn" spelling. The Macross 7 serial about her used "Lin Minmei" as well.

Basically, the only real times you see it spelled "Lynn Minmay" are autographs & show posters.

bzzzt Lynn Minmay appears on her audition letter that Hikaru reads early on... a, legal spelling "Ms. Lynn Minmay"

It's a chinese name so really it would need to be written in Chinese letters to be correct, not Japanese Katakana not Roman letters... how it's rendered into Katakana and then how it's rendered into roman letters is a matter of preference more then anything else. One dosn't have to be a legal spelling and one a stage name, that's a concept created for Robotech.

Edit: well she was born in Japan so she might have infact been legally registered with the katakana spelling. And Minmei/Minmay would be a Japanization of the original Chinese to start with. But I would rank in order of importance

The Chinese writing > The Katakana writing > the Romaji writing

unfortunately to my knowledge we don't know her proper... un-japanized Chinese name.

though Japanese names are a lot easier to say (though that's probably just cause I'm fairly competent in Japanese but know no Chinese)

Edited December 21, 2007 by lord_breetai

[sketchley]

I don't believe we are every shown the Chinese characters (kanji) for her name. It's simply リン・ミンメイ.

In Modified Hepburn, that's romanized as Rin Minmei.

Agreed that the romanization falls to a matter of preference. (In this case, unless she chronically misunderstands and misuses roman letters, she is deliberately choosing to use two alternative romanizations.)

Also agreed that she would most likely have her name registered in katakana, especially if the Chinse characters (kanji) used in her name are not one of the (currently 983) kanji on the Jinmeiyo list.

[lord_breetai]

I don't believe we are every shown the Chinese characters (kanji) for her name. It's simply リン・ミンメイ.

In Modified Hepburn, that's romanized as Rin Minmei.

Agreed that the romanization falls to a matter of preference. (In this case, unless she chronically misunderstands and misuses roman letters, she is deliberately choosing to use two alternative romanizations.)

Also agreed that she would most likely have her name registered in katakana, especially if the Chinse characters (kanji) used in her name are not one of the (currently 983) kanji on the Jinmeiyo list.

Yeah I know we don't see the kanji for her name, I'm just saying if we did that's how I'd rank it. Maybe it's a matter of her family having used Minmei and they made her bunny sign and stuff but she just liked the way Minmay looked herself.

Still I'd be interested in seeing the Chinese characters for the name... but yeah

[Ginrai]

One dosn't have to be a legal spelling and one a stage name, that's a concept created for Robotech.

What? Robotech never says that. Robotech exclusively spells it Lynn Minmei and ignores the Minmay spelling.

[lord_breetai]

What? Robotech never says that. Robotech exclusively spells it Lynn Minmei and ignores the Minmay spelling.

Tommy said Minmay was a stage spelling at one point, it's never officially dressed on the website or anything else but staff members have said it.

[Keith]

Tommy said Minmay was a stage spelling at one point, it's never officially dressed on the website or anything else but staff members have said it.

Being spelled that way on the contest form isn't conclusive either, especially if Minmay herself decided to propegate that spelling. Though it would be a lot easier to solve if any of her other family had romanized spellings of their names in the animation. Incensative bastards!

[lord_breetai]

Being spelled that way on the contest form isn't conclusive either, especially if Minmay herself decided to propegate that spelling. Though it would be a lot easier to solve if any of her other family had romanized spellings of their names in the animation. Incensative bastards!

Well it wasn't a form, it was a letter of acceptance there's a difference she likely would have used her "normal" spelling for that.

But you know what, it's hilarious, that we debate this when the Japanese fans and the creators really could care less how we render the characters names in our alphabet.

[Keith]

That's because if there's one thing that american's can beat Japan at, it's being anal about the most inane things!