I heard some kids say manga as man-ga, and not as man-wha, which I believe is the correct word. What do you call it? Is there a difference between the two?
The form was invented in Japan in the postwar years and "whimsical pictures," manga, is the Japanese term for it. Like much of the Japanese language, those syllables are Chinese words, assimilated when Buddhist monks from China virtually brought their entire Iron-Age civilization (including the technology of writing) to Japan's Bronze-Age culture in the first millennium CE. The form has spread to nearby countries and the same Chinese words are used for its name. The Chinese pronounce it in Mandarin, man hua. In Korea--which was also culturally colonized by Chinese monks--it happens to be pronounced the same way: man hwa. Korean pronunciation of Chinese words is often closer to Mandarin than Japanese pronunciation, although it is not always identical as in this example. If you're hearing it as man-hwa you must live in an area with a large Korean-American or Chinese-American community. The standard American English pronunciation is manga. Most Americans can't even pronounce the sound HW. You have to teach them to say HOO-WAH as two syllables and then gradually say it faster until they merge. The sound we write as WH was once the HW sound, but it degenerated into just W long ago. Even in British "Received Pronunciation" it's W. It's Grimm's Law of phonetic shift from Indo-European K to Germanic H, e.g. Latin quid ---> proto-Germanic hwat. (Grimm also explains the shift from D to T.) Early modern English was the last holdout in keeping the HW sound. We lost the H but kept the W. German and Dutch lost the H long ago and changed the W to V. The Scandinavians changed the W to V first and then lost the H (I bet that happened quickly!); they still write it quaintly as HV.
That makes sense thanks. I don't know any Japanese people well, but I do know a lot of Chinese and Koreans.
Manga is a company that makes Anime, observe @ http://www.manga.com/ perhaps he was referring to that?
man·ga [mahng-guh, mang‑] –noun a Japanese graphic novel, typically intended for adults, characterized by highly stylized art.
romanji = manga kanji = 漫画 漫 pronounced "man" and means cartoon. 画 pronounced "ga" and means picture. 漫画 = manga = cartoon picture.
You are assuming that manga and manwha are the same thing, or that Japanese and Hangul are the same language. Also, why not post up the hangul characters for the term that come out to pronounce manwha instead of the kanji that produce the word manga? I don't get why morons can't figure out that the Koreans and the Japanese are two distinct sets of people, with the exception of the Korea boom in Japan. I'm sure that you don't question the difference between the telephone and the teléfono, despite one being the English word and the other being the Spanish word.
No, I'm just assuming the Japanese would pronounce it the way ALL the Chinese and Koreans I know pronounce it. Don't know any Japs that well. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It isn't a pronounciation issue, but the fact that they are two different words in two different languages. hangul =/= mandarin =/= japanese
This is the Linguistics subforum and we all know that Japanese and Korean are distinct languages, possibly distantly related to each other as well as to Mongolian, Manchurian, Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish in a postulated Mongolic superfamily. Both countries were culturally colonized by Buddhist monks from China, who brought them writing. Both countries have since developed phonetic writing systems. The Japanese still use about 2,000 Chinese characters (kanji in Japanese, hanzi in Chinese, hanja in Korean). The Koreans have made a more thorough transition to phonetic writing, which is essentially complete in North Korea. Hanja linger in South Korea as formalities and most educated Koreans can write their surnames in Hanja Man ga is the on reading of the kanji for the words that describe this artform in Japanese: the original Chinese pronunciation, distorted by the Japanese phonetics of the time, and further distorted by 1500 years of phonetic shifts within Japanese. The ancient Chinese pronunciation happens to be fairly similar to modern Mandarin man hua. The Koreans learned the same writing system and assimilated many of the same concepts and the same words. Man hwa is the Chinese term man hua, probably assimilated from the Japanese during the long Japanese occupation of Korea, but the root words were already well established in Korean. In cases like this the Koreans prefer to take the original kanji and apply the Korean reading to them, rather than adopting Japanese words phonetically. I can't post those characters but here's the Wikipedia article that shows both Hangul and Hanja. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhwa There is no need to insult other members on this board, at least when it's not meant in jest, and it's a violation of the rules of SciForums. As the Moderator I'm asking you to please not do it again. And they're both from the same source: modern scientific Latinized forms of Greek words. Just as the Japanese and Korean words for the artform being discussed are from the same source: Chinese.
we're still politically incorrect in India. We even say Pakis and niggers and chinks without anyone going apoplectic. South Indians are "coconuts", Muslims are yamis (from Miya bhai, an appellation used for Muslim elderly men), Bengalis are Bongs, Punjabis are Punjus, Sikhs are Sardars or Pagdis (pagdi=turban), Malayalis are Mallus etc. Whites are goras, in case you wondered. Yeah well, I should tell my friends to spell them out for me the next time, so I can enhance my learning.
Ha, you should have seen me crack a "nigger" joke at my graduate orientation in the US. The silence was deafening. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Honestly it's not a big deal in India. I introduce myself as a yami all the time. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!