"Foreign" students at Hogwarts (Cho)

[kuroinotsuki]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "L" <prittylina at y...> wrote:
> --- 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>
> 
> > 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:

*delurks*

I think what Dr.MM was trying to say here (Forgive me if I'm wrong)
is 
that it's impossible for a Japanese word to end in just "g" as
"Chang" 
does. See, the "g" in "arigato" and "origami" don't exist as "g" on 
their own but as part of the syllable "ga". "Arigatou" (it's a long
o) 
would be written out in Japanese as 

a ri ga tou

and origami is written as

o ri ga mi.

The only letters allowed to exist "on their own" in Japanese are 
vowels and the letter "n". Everything else is part of a syllable and 
likewise words can only end in a vowel or in the letter "n". 

Therefore, it's impossible to have a surname like "Chang" be Japanese 
because it ends in simply in "g" and not a vowel or the letter "n". 
Also, you can't spell "Chang" as it is with any of the syllables used 
in the Japanese language. It would end up being either

cha n gu (which isn't right)
or
cha n g (which isn't possible in Japanese).

> 
> > > 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.

*nods* Japanese family names are never monosyllabic and I can't think 
of any names, personal or otherwise, that don't have at least two 
syllables.

Now, "Cho" does have a meaning in Japanese--actually it has about 
seven million meanings depending on what kanji you're using to write 
it--but as far as my kanji dictionary is concerned,(granted it's a 
beginner's dictionary) "Cho" on its own is always a long "o" which 
would be written out "Chou" in Japanese. And "Chou" is almost always 
the "onyomi" reading of a kanji: the reading of the kanji derived
from 
the original Chinese reading/meaning of the kanji (The Japanese 
borrowed kanji almost entirely from the Chinese, and made a few 
changes here and there. There are two ways kanji can be read in 
Japanese--the onyomi, or Chinese way (which are usually short 
words--ka, ba, shi, ji--and can be one syllable) and the kunyomi or 
Japanese way (which tend to be longer--tsuki, karada, shizu--and 
multi-syllabic). Which points even more at "Cho" being a 
Chinese-derived name.

Yomiko ("the reading girl")