On Writing Only with Alternating Vowels and Consonants
Japanglish
I’m not sure, but I think that Japanglish — in the following literary form — is my invention. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Again, this came out of a very difficult writing challenge from the producers of the Radio 3’s The Verb and the fiendishly friendly presenter, Ian McMillan. By the time we’d reached this stage, November 2007, they were trusting me to choose my own restrictions. I think today’s, and tomorrow’s, were about getting to the point of either impossibility or total silliness.
If you’re going to write in Japanglish, you need to obey what I understand is the Japanese linguistic rule or quirk of always having a vowel follow a consonant, and vice versa.
Think of the names Watanabe or Mononoke.
I know there are exceptions. There must be.
Again, do let me know.
My one small cheat is that Y can be either a vowel or a consonant.
But, if you want to give it a go, you can take away even that small bit of assistance.
You nut.
One final note — in writing the exchange of escalating insults, I was very much thinking of Estragon and Vladimir in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
That climaxes in ‘Crritic!’
I was quite pleased with my ultimate insult.
BAHAMAS
Dino Holocene met Eva Peron in a go-go bar in opaline Mexico City.
He was a no-no for any woman – a loco homo sap. Eva, however, amazed everybody beside her.
Eva spoke: ‘Hey, I can imitate mama canary.’
Dino: ‘Yes? Okay, amaze me, baby.’
‘Wo-wo-wo-wo-wo!’
Dino was amused.
‘Aha! ‘Tis elevated, I say!’
Eva liked a big one, like Dino kimosabe.
‘We go down Orinoco, Dino. You coco?’
But ole Dino he go: ‘No!’
Peron is agog. ‘O no no no,’ comes Eva’s inimical oratory.
To her ace face Holocene, he say, ‘O so-so womany-one. My love’s originality: Bebop. Everybody say it on one: “Yo!”. Hugely do I love ‘Koko’: solo for a sax ace. (Not a tenor one merely.) Ramalama! Ha-ha-ha!’
‘Never again,’ Eva mopes. (Uh-oh.) ‘Orotund one!’
Dino: ‘Me?’
Peron: ‘One big asinine Dino salami to go!’
Holocene: ‘Coconut ululator!’
‘Imitative Tibetan!’
‘Unopened ocelot!’
‘Aromatic ape!’
‘Manipulated ovulator!’
‘O… paradise similitude!’
‘Taramasalata pus ovary!’
Eva’s used up.
Eyes go to her.
‘I so love Dino.’
‘Peron, I love my go-go gal.’
It is an open end of a minimal episode.
Dino Holocene takes Eva Peron in a locomotive to Poco-Poco.
Image credit: Avaria at Free Vector
An interesting challenge. Just a few points on the Japanese language while my kettle boils (they may not matter for the Japanglish you defined, but, hey, they might inspire a new version):
1. Japanese kana alphabets are of the form ka/ki/ku/ke/ko as you say, but not all our English sounds are traditional to the Japanese language, so there are no va/vi/vu... and English l / r sounds are troubling (the kana for ra/ri/ru... aren't quite an English r or an l but somewhere in between. Larry and Rally would probably both be written as ra-ri or ra-rri)
2. Which takes me to a doubled consonant: there is a symbol in kana to differentiate between a tt/rr/ss and a t/r/s in case you want to add that to your rules
3. Ka/ki/ku/ke/ko is the regular form but... there are irrgeulars: ta/chi/tsu/te/to, sa/shi/su/se/so and hi/hi/fu/he/ho. When I was a child learning the language at school, we 'romanised' them in this way but some traditional texts used ta/ti/tu/te/to but told you to pronounce 'ti' as 'chi'.
4. There is a vowel-free consonant. N. So hanko is a word (for a name stamp). The N can become an M before a B or a P sound, eg Bimbo or Rambo.
5. There are also the single vowels a/i/u/e/o and some additional vowel sounds are created eg by ta-i (which would sound like our tie) or se-i (close to our say).
6. In recent years the language has evolved, esp to reflect foreign words - Scotland's capital would have been pronounced (I think) eh-gin-ba-ra because the Japanese did not have a 'di' as in dinner kana/ sound. Now the kana combo of 'de' and a small 'i' tells people to pronounce it ehdinbara
7. And last (darn. The water in the kettle has cooled. I have written an essay!): if you wanted to be strict, you could also look at whether the syllable is pronounced the same way. Ma-ge would be pronounced Ma (as in matador) Gue (as in guest).
Off to have a coffee to recover from that enthusiasm!
I like this little piece and I reckon I would've enjoyed it without knowing the context or rules n'all.