言語学 (original) (raw)

[	mood	|	aggravated	]

There are a vast number of students going into Japanese due to being "philes", if you will, of animation and comic books. These people want to learn the language just for the purpose of "learning" how to read these types of media.

One word used by these individuals is the word, "bishonen" (pretty boy) IPA = [bifonen]. Some people, internationally, mostly Americans, I feel, shorten this word to "bishie/bish/bishi" [IPA: bifi],[IPA: bif], [IPA: bifi]. My question is: why?

In English, we have the phoneme /sh/ and /ow/. We have the word "show." [IPA: fo]

If I made any mistakes, please inform me of them.

Thank you!

(I cannot type in IPA on my Mom's laptop...so "f" = "sh", the cursive "f" symbol)

Crossposted: linguaphiles