http://xogij.blogs.com/xogij/After reading your comments to my last post, I was surprised to hear that many of you have played the "do-not-touch-the-ground" type games. Children are always seeking their primitive pleasure, no matter where they live. So it may be no wonder that they can happen to discover the same way to play.
We used to play many types of games in our childhood. Some of them have descended through the generations and some were created by ourselves. Although the rules of each game would be slightly different, many people in various countries may have played similar types of games.
The following are the games I played again and again (over 30 years ago). (Note that those explanations are based on the local rules which I used to play. There may be many other different rules than them.)
Comical Synchronicity
Most of foreign words are converted to KATAKANA characters when they are imported to Japan. Of course those 45 types of characters can not describe every words from every other country completely. We select a KATAKANA character which has most similar pronunciation to each syllable of original words. Since there is no Japanese pronunciation for both L and R, these two consonants are converted to the same Japanese consonant. So they always confuse us.
And when we pronounce those imported foreign words, we follow the pronunciations of those KATAKANAs. This custom prevents us from improving speaking foreign language.
Sometimes the same foreign word has several ways of description in KATAKANA, because those conversions are very subjective. For example, the English word "mobile" had been described like (MOHBIRU), but it has changed to (MOBAIRU) in these years.
Sometimes, those converted foreign words happen to have the same pronunciation as other Japanese words. And on rare occasions, these foreign and domestic words happen to be related in their meanings. It's so funny.
