English Accent

I went to a pub with a friend and one of the guys there was trying to help me find something nonalcoholic to drink. Well, he recommended the "Kodomono Cider".

I should take a moment to tell you that Japanese has tonal patterns in every word that help you to figure what the other person is saying, since they don't really believe in spaces in either writing or speech, and it wouldn't be a stretch to say that they have more homophones than some languages have discrete words. In writing, you have Chinese characters (kanji) to "assist" you in figuring out what's going on.
In speech, if someone says hashi, there are three possible meanings: "bridge", "chopsticks", and "edge". Now, this seems like it could be really confusing if you happened to be eating while walking over a bridge, but the Japanese have two ways of solving this:

1. Never eating while performing any kind of locomotion. Bad, bad, naughty.
2. Tone patterns!

Now, while the Japanese are nowhere near as draconian when it comes to tonal accentation as the Chinese are (I can't even count to ten in Chinese without saying that someone's mother is a donkey. Or something.), it does cause a little confusion if you completely fail them. If you've ever talked to someone who doesn't pause between the words he's saying, or read something that has no spaces, it's fairly similar. It'salittlehardertofigureoutwhat'sbeingsaid, I think. I mean, you can still get it, but it throws you for a second.

So, back to the cider I got. What it was was "child's beer", or こどものビール (kodomo no biiru). When the guy said this, though, he said kodomono, with a flat accent on the whole thing, which says to me a brand name or something. I think he also transposed two syllables at one point and said komodono, and I couldn't help picturing him trying to get massive lizards to drink for the rest of the night.

Now, that looks pretty confusing, and I wrote it, so to recap:

1. kodomo no - "child's"
2. kodomono - No meaning that I'm aware of, so I assumed it was a brand name. I don't really frequent bars, you know? Sounds like kudamono (fruit).
   
3. komodono - Either a large lizard, or someone respected named "Komo". This style isn't used anymore, so...

Now, I mentioned that Japanese has no spaces, so you may be thinking "What's the difference between kodomo no and kodomono if the space isn't it?"
Having the space there tells when written in roman characters will make you subconsciously pronounce it differently. Try reading it out loud and I think you'll see what I mean. What you should hear is that you, as an English speaker (presumably, anybody who's reading this also speaks English), naturally place the stress accent in a certain place. The Japanese language has something similar with tones - though I still have a pretty strong American-sounding stress accent.*

Okay, class dismissed!

*Americans are, from what I've heard, well-known for saying waTAshi or WAtashi instead of the volume-flat watashi, and killing other words in a similar manner. Now class is dismissed.