"Foreign" students at Hogwarts (Cho)

[L]

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Petra Pan <ms_petra_pan at y...> 
wrote:
> DrMM, in part:
> > Cho Chang is most definatly not
> > a Japanese name.  The Japanese 
> > language doesn't have a hard "g"
> > sound.
> 
> Does 'Chang' have a hard 'g' sound 
> in it?  <eg>

No, it doesn't; "Chang" is, phonetically // (or
/a/), although 
I believe that, in this case (as "cho" is not a pinyin Chinese 
morpheme ["chou", yes]), it is actually Zhang (Wades-Giles system), 
thus /a/. (At least, this is how the Chinese version
translates it 
[QiuZhang == Cho Chang, HaliBote == Harry Potter], with
which I 
much agree.) To me, her name brings to mind either someone from 
Taiwan or someone who is British-born (second generation, likely), 
given the fact that the name seems to be Wade-Giles. Perhaps HK, but 
Cantonese really doesn't have "Chang" as a surname (Cantonese would 
be "Cheung")... 

However, it could be noted that "Chang" could be a Korean name under 
certain romanizations. (If I recall correctly, "Jang" [the equilivent 
of "Zhang/Chang"] has been romanized as "Chang" in the past.) 
Doubtful, though, that it's such. 

> Though I agree that naming a 
> character 'Cho Chang' is not 
> likely meant to indicate Japanese 
> ancestry, the reason you give 
> above is completely not in keeping 
> with what we know of the Japanese 
> language.  I mean, what are the 'g' 
> sounds in, say, 'origami' and 
> 'arigato' if they aren't hard?  
> Take a look at the next to last 
> paragraph of this page:

I think that they meant that a hard 'g' does not exist in a final 
sound. However, that 'g' is not indicating a consonant, but a 
particular nasal ().

> > I've also met a *lot* of Japanese
> > people and I have yet to meet one
> > named Cho or Chang (I live in
> > Japan right now).
> 
> Living in California, I've also 
> encountered a great many names that 
> are of Japanese origin.  I have yet 
> to see a family name that is mono-
> syllabic.  Hardly conclusive but 
> there you have it - another reason 
> this name does not read 'Japanese' 
> to me.

Most certainly not. Japanese is a syballic language, with only one 
final nasal-syllable (/n/), and the rest of syllables as CV 
(consonant vowel). It's a beautifully phonetic language like that. :D 


L, who is a fan of East Asian linguistics