Straight-talking Japanese Yoichi Funabashi

[gkanai]

Interesting profile of Funabashi:

YOICHI Funabashi speaks impeccable, unaccented English without a trace of the American-style roll of the R's favoured by many of his countrymen.

It's not just his diction. The veteran Japanese journalist is so comfortable with the English language that word-play becomes a natural inflexion.

For instance, when talking about Japan's attitude towards the American occupation of Iraq, he told Sunday Review: 'We want the US to succeed in Iraq - but we don't want it to succeed too successfully.'

He titled an article he wrote for the prestigious Washington-based Foreign Affairs magazine on how Asian consciousness and identity are coming vigorously to life, 'The Asianisation of Asia'.

No wonder that Asahi Shimbun's award-winning chief diplomatic correspondent and columnist is one of Japan's most articulate commentators writing in English.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/0,4386,210801,00.html

[Taro Toporific]

Interesting profile of Funabashi:

YOICHI Funabashi speaks impeccable, unaccented English without a trace of the American-style roll of the R's favoured by many of his countrymen.

The reporter doesn't know the difference between a "rolled r" (Spanish) and a "voiced r" (N. America). Whata ruser.

- - - taro, who embarrassingly cannnot consistently roll his 'r's on the ranch in Colorado

[Caustic Saint]

Whata ruser.

Maybe he just being sirry? Or ilonic? OR CLAZY!?!?

[Taro Toporific]

Whata ruser.

Maybe he just being sirry? Or ilonic? OR CLAZY!?!?

Maybe this a "direct translation" problem between Chinese and English. The editors of the Straits Times didn't seem to notice this howler. Maybe, in Chinese, voiced 'r' is called "rolled r". For example, Americans call Bostonian dialect "r-less" speech when in reality it's just a British "unvoiced r" as opposed to the hard "voiced r" found in most North American English.