1902 ʒapɔnɛ

Having dug out the 1902 volume of Le Maître Phonétique for yesterday’s blog, I was glancing through it when I came across the following phonetic specimen of Japanese, which I thought might be of interest to those of my readers who know or speak that language.

Strangely, the introduction to the specimen is written in phonetically transcribed French, but the notes accompanying the transcribed passage are in phonetically transcribed English.

I hope I am not insulting everyone’s intelligence if I translate the introduction into English for you. It reads as follows.

The following text comprises part of the materials collected by our colleague E. R. Edwards, which he is using in the preparation of his great and impatiently awaited work, A Study of Spoken Japanese. It was written from the dictation of another of our colleagues, Dr Yasugi [jɑsɯŋi]. who is at the moment in Russia, and whom we had the pleasure of seeing in the m.f. office three months ago. This is probably the first time that a reasonably lengthy Japanese text has been published in a form accessible to Europeans.

Here is a larger version of the actual specimen. Click to enlarge further.

I am in no position to comment on the text itself nor on the accompanying notes, though I did notice a few points.

• In the first line, I believe that the ŋ in o-musùmeŋo would probably be g in today’s Japanese, and similarly in seŋɑre in the third line.
• I suspect that wɑtɑkʃì in line 3 and again in line 7 ought to be wɑtɑʃi, with no k.
• Is the square-bracket-like mark in line 1 and again in line 4 intended? (If it was meant as a pitch-accent mark, that was not a sign approved by the IPA at that time, and is not explained in the notes.)

In connection with fuːfu (line 3) a note overleaf reads

(f) in dʒæpənijz iz ə vərɑiəti əv bɑileibiəl frikətiv; it iz prədjuwst bɑi drɑiviŋ ði ɛːə əɡeinst ðə tijθ ən bouθ lips witʃ ə niəli bʌt nɔt kwɑit klouzd ənd ə slɑitli drɔːn ɑut ət ðə kɔːnəˑz. it iz, striktli spijkiŋ, ə lip-ən-tijθ-mɔdifɑid (h).

Nowadays we might write it narrowly as [ɸ], or phonemically as /h/.