Weabooese? ;)

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 7:49 PM, Logan Kearsley <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> I got to pondering what Japanese might end up like if it were to be
> exported around the world and picked up by lots and lots of
> second-language speakers. I am somewhat inspired in this by the
> proliferation of American fans of anime; that phenomenon, combined
> with the large number of English loanwords into Japanese, would seem
> to make an excellent environment for a sort of English-Japanese
> creole, if, say, a whole bunch of American otaku were exported to Mars
> or something.
>
> I don't have much so far, but the most obvious change I would expect
> is a loss of vowels from original Japanese words, resulting in new
> consonant clusters. Specifically, the loss of devoiced vowels, which
> English speakers often just don't hear.
>
> Some additional tweaking to the rules may be necessary to avoid
> creating clusters that the Anglophone bad-Japanese learners would
> themselves find difficult to pronounce, but the basics would be
> something like this:
>
> 1. No two vowels in consecutive syllables can both be dropped.
> 2. /i/ & /u/ are candidates for dropping following a voiceless
> consonant at the end of a word, following a voiceless consonant
> following a downstep in pitch, or between two voiceless consonants..
> 3. /o/ is a candidate for dropping between voiceless consonants where
> it precedes another syllable containing /o/.
> 4. When two or more consecutive vowels are both candidates, which
> vowels are actually dropped is determined by dropping the right-most
> candidate vowel, then the penultimate candidate vowel, and so forth.
> 5. Dropping of final vowels results in compensatory gemination of the
> preceding consonant, and aspiration on stops.
>
> After this phonological change, there is the possibility of continuing
> to write original Japanese words according to their historical
> pronunciation, but given that consonant clusters are now allowed,
> there is the possibility of loanwords which lack vowels in places that
> cannot be predicted based on those rules, and so some means would have
> to be devised to write individual consonants.
>
> -l.
>