Japanese pussies slurp 'meow meow' sex wine Those cat-lovers among you who fear your beloved feline might feel left out at birthday and Xmas celebrations are directed to this tempting tipple - a brew of Cabernet grape juice, catnip and vitamin C dubbed "Nyan Nyan Nouveau". A bottle of Nyan Nyan Nouveau For a modest ¥399 ($4, £2.50) a bottle, cats can join the …
The correct pronunciation is Ñian-Ñian. The 'n' sounds a bit like the first 'n' in the Spanish 'mañana'. And as said above, each 'nyan' is one syllable, not two. And it should rhyme with 'yarn-yarn' (appropriately enough), not 'can-can'.
Obviously, neither 'nyan' nor 'meow' sounds anything like a cat noise, anymore than a cat talking to you sounds like English. James Joyce's "Mrkgnao" is as good an onomatopoeia as any.
The first syllable is Ni, somewhere between the knights who say ni and your knee, but the next is lowwer and smaller, meaning that the previous runs into it. This second syllable is ya, with a hard a such as would be used in hat or cat, rather than ah or car. The third syllable is n, except it's not quite like an English n or N, it is like the very last bit of saying "an" but think shorter. The upshot is nee-ya-n.
"Nya" is a combination of the syllables 'ni' (as in knights who say) and "ya" (short 'a' sound, as in cat). When the two syllables are combined, the 'i' vowel sound is dropped.
If you had a friend called Jan (pronounced Yan), and stuck an 'n' sound in front of it, that's pretty much what 'nyan' sounds like in Japanese.
Various syllables in Japanese (ki, shi, chi, ni, mi, hi, all of which rhyme with a shorter version of the English "me") can have ya, yu or yo attached to them like this and the 'i' sound is always dropped. A case in point is Tokyo, which is definitely not pronounced toe-kee-o, but actually more like it's spelled, with 'kyo' being a single distinct syllable sound.
(*Only the 'o' vowels in "Tokyo" are long, so it's often romanised as "Tōkyō", but that's a different matter)
On the serious side, grapes are known to be toxic to at least some cats and dogs. I seriously hope there is no actual grape juice in it: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/grapes-raisins-dogs-cats-warning.shtml
The CNBC article (http://www.cnbc.com/id/101123574) mentions that most cats wouldn't even drink it, which is good at least.
Nyan-nyan is also baby-talk for cat (and several other things), I really don't think the makers of this product are going for the sex angle so half your story doesn't make any sense.
P.S. Nyan is one syllable, N as in the consonant N followed by yan like the chinese surname Yan. All in one syllable and yes this is a stupid product.
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