[EVA] Re: another linguistic question

[Luis Alís Ferrer]

>      The sound of B is bilabial and V is labiodental. When transcribing 
>      foreign words to katakana in the past, the subtle nuance between
these 
>      sounds could not be reflected by the more simplified Japanese sound 
>      system so B and V were reduced to B (ba, bi, bu, be, bo). 
>      
>      ## I read that B and V are also indistinguishable in Spanish. Is it
>      ## true?

More or less. The theory is we have B and V sounds, and in fact older and
cultivated people pronounces a difference. But now we young people speak
quite faster and have simplified the sounds so now everything sounds
bilabial. When I speak Japanese I always say "ebangerion" instead of
"evangerion". :-p 
But you can still find a lot of people that clearly differenciates the
sounds. 

_________________________
Luis Alis (nash at mx2.redestb.es)