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Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by ithkuil on Sunday June 16, 2024 @05:32PM (#40700283)
There are other subtle rules that language may follow in word formation.

For example, in Japanese, a word like tokatokaino may mutate into tokadokaino due to a phonological effect called Rendaku (it depends on details like if "tokadokaino" is a compound word made of "toka"+"toka"+"ino")

Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by dotancohen on Sunday June 16, 2024 @05:43PM (#40700368)
Is this the reason that we call Toyoda's company by the name Toyota?
Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by Macha on Sunday June 16, 2024 @06:48PM (#40700748)
So Toyota has a company folklore explanation to do with the number of strokes when written in hiragana being a lucky number, but Japanese linguists were skeptical when the BBC did a piece on it and think it was just a preference for the unvoiced version when the town in which it was founded changed its name to match the company: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8534294.stm