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Old 04-28-2006, 05:25 AM   #39
Koga
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Master Of All I Survey
So which countries west of Japan would actually pronounce that as we?
The Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain and probably more Western European countries of which I don't know that much about the phonology.

Cross-linguistically 'i' is more often used to represent /i/ as in 'see' than /ai/ as in 'time'. The English vowel spelling is quite unique in the world, as they had a great vowel shift. /e/ is spelled 'e' in most of the European languages, but 'a' in English (as in A,B,C).

But of course in those countries it isn't associated with urinating.
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