"Foreign" students at Hogwarts (Cho)

[Petra Pan]

DrMM, in part:
> Cho Chang is most definatly not
> a Japanese name.  The Japanese 
> language doesn't have a hard "g"
> sound.

Yours truly asked with tongue in cheek:
> 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:

Yomiko, in part:
> 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).

Yes, I know the above.  However,
someone with less familiarity with the 
Japanese language could not have 
derived that understanding purely from 
the original statement "The Japanese 
language doesn't have a hard 'g' sound."  
Just wanted DrMM to provide an 
explanation of what s/he meant.  :)

I am however surprised at the ways both 
you and DrMM break up the syllable that 
is 'Chang.'  Could it not also be simply 
'chan' and the essentially silent 'g' 
dropped altogether?  Because really, the 
syllable-closing consonant sound is not 
'g' but 'ng' which is closer to 'n' than 
a hard 'g.'

Of course, to answer that question is to 
continue on the rigmarole that is the 
process of transliteration/romanization; 
the combination of the letters in 'Cho 
Chang' represents only the pronunciation 
of the Chinese ideograms, leaving behind 
the denotation, connotation and etymology 
of the words that make up the name.

Though the written Chinese has been 
standardized, the spoken language exists 
in numerous dialects.  Without knowing 
which dialect, it's difficult to pin down 
which phoneme the transliteration is 
trying to refer to.  Heck, even after 
identifying the phoneme correctly, there 
usually are numerous ideograms with that 
same phoneme/pronunciation. 

Surely the easiest way to designate a 
Chinese name in Japanese would be to 
simply go back to the original source and 
use kanji.  Which kanji would be the 
question.  This makes me wonder how the 
translators of the Chinese versions of HP 
grappled with this issue before publishing.  
Was JKR presented with the various choices 
or did the translators just chose whatever 
tickled their fancy?  Figuring out the 
last name is much easier since only so 
many words function as last names.  First 
names are however essentially unique, 
which is to say, in this case, it can be 
any word that could sound like 'Cho.'

Petra
a
n  :)

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