19th October 2004, 12:29 PM
Quote:You never pronounce two ii's as separate vowels in Japanese, Brian. They're adjacent vowels. Do you know what adjacent means? It doesn't mean that there can't be other letters around them, silly.
My point was that that first 'i' wasn't a solo vowel, it was part of the syllable 'shi'. The difference matters! Yes, it does end up as sheeee, but you need to remember how Japanese is syllabic, not alphabetic.