Monday, April 21, 2003

Japanese Car Names

My girlfriend: Why does Toyota keep naming their cars things that would be hard for a Japanese speaker to pronounce? Like "Prius."

Me: They put "R" in there.

She: Japanese doesn't have the "PR" sound.

Me: Nevermind "PR", it doesn't even have the "R" sound of English.

She: I mean it doesn't have the P+R combination.

Me: It doesn't even have the P+Any Consonant combination. Japanese doesn't have those kinds of consonant clusters.

She: Yeah.

Me: They don't have the foresight to name the car something that would be especially easy to pronounce, like the "Toyota Kaka."

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