Re: Same Shikona

[Jennifer McGee <jmcgee@asu.aasa.ac.jp>]

Mikko T Mattila wrote:

> > M4E Toki is written "TOUKI" (^Ó¬^Éå), which means Fighting Tusk, and
> > spoken with a long "O".
>
> Yep. I once wrote "Toki" to a Japanese who was not an expert sumofan but
> knew reasonably lot about Makuuchi but he didn`t know who I was talking
> about. After my description he naturally knew and said something like
> "Aaa, Touki you mean!" and added something that "toki" means time or
> something like that in Japanese(?). I might remember that wrong though.

Yeah, the Japanese language is very sensitive to the difference between one-beat and two-beat syllables (that is, do you hold the sound for one beat of conversation or two).  I've talked
about "Toki" to my students and gotten nothing but puzzlement until I started pronouncing it correctly as "Tooki."  To my ears, there isn't that much difference at all, but to a native
Japanese speaker, they're totally different words.  My iniability to hear the difference has gotten me confused looks with lots of different words.

Jen M.