But before we get there, it is fun to brainstorm about this mind-boggling product, Maple Flavoured Almond Poodle Blend. Here are Deb's fun suggestions:
A large vat of poodles from which is extracted...The true answer lies here: http://www.justhungry.com//almond-poodle. Basically it is a mangled French word that means "powder". So it is Powdered Almonds.
Or a type of almond hair conditioner for frizzy hair...
Or a carpet freshener for poodle accidents in a maple scent....
Ah, the possibilities are delightful.
The Japanese language has a tendency to do this, because they only have 46 sounds, they squeeze foreign words into those 46 sounds and the result can be unrecognisable. For example, Makudonarudo is Japanese for McDonalds!
In the case of the "Almond Poodles", they've taken a foreign word (poudre), squeezed it into Japanese (puudoru or プードル) and then "translated" back in "Romaji" script (ABCs) with an unfortunate result.
English has only 44 sounds (phonemes). It's not really a matter of how many phonemes a language has, but what rules they have for combining them. The squeezing of words happens when the pattern of sounds does not match.
ReplyDeleteEnglish allows multiple consonants to follow each other without an intervening vowel. Other languages only allow for alternation of vowel and consonant. In your example the cluster of "LDS" is something outside the pattern of allowable Japanese syllables.
Words which offer interesting possibilities include SCRewDRiver and CHRiSTMas. STRing, atteMPTS.
Ken, that makes total sense. English has much more flexibility in combining sounds. They do only have five vowel sounds, however, which limits the conversion even more.
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