"Robert Coe" wrote:
: :
: : You don't have fall at the same time as the rest of the northern
: : hemisphere?
: : How did you arrange that?
: :
: :
: : The Tokyo Ginkgo trees turn in late Nov/early Dec, so there's
: : foliage to shoot here long after foliage old news in New England.
: :
: : -- David J. Littleboy
: : Tokyo, Japan
: :
: : My Geographical Biology professor put forth the Ginkgo as an example
: : of a relict.
:
: A what??
:
: Bob
:
: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/relict?s=t

Got it! Like a film camera. Or film itself. ;^)

But just to be argumentative, and to stay up a few more minutes, what kind
of
word is "ginkgo"? It appears to violate my understanding of Japanese
phonological rules. (Specifically, I'd expect a (voiced) "i" or "u" between
the "k" and the "g". Or I'd expect the word to be spelled "ginkon" or
"gingon".)

That said, I freely admit that my knowledge of Japanese borders on
infinitesimal.


You are quite right: the English word is quite dizzy: the middle "g" there
should be a "y".

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ginkgo

But even that is a mistake: the actual Japanese word for that tree is
pronounced itcho. The nuts of the tree are pronounced "ginnan" and written
with exactly the same Chinese characters as the name of the tree. The
Japanese make a point of doing perverse things with Chinese characters to
keep in their place folks who make the mistake of trying to learn Japanese
as a second language.

-- David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan