tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post3122302811529985837..comments2024-03-17T09:14:13.950+00:00Comments on John Wells’s phonetic blog: bimoraic vowelsJohn Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684304410735867148noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-62792129408960157182012-08-08T16:29:28.675+01:002012-08-08T16:29:28.675+01:00Daniel
Latin vowels are actually quite similar in...Daniel<br /><br /><i>Latin vowels are actually quite similar in pronunciation to Japanese vowels.<br /></i><br /><br />Not after going through the Great Vowel Shift — which is why John wrote:<br /><br /><i>if English had borrowed the word torii seven or eight hundred years ago</i>.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-56284396809495379642012-08-08T09:24:31.240+01:002012-08-08T09:24:31.240+01:00Radii is only pronounced that way if you are prono...Radii is only pronounced that way if you are pronouncing it as English. The long I doesn't make that sound in Latin so a Latin 2nd declension noun does not sound like that at all. While there are some differences of course, Latin vowels are actually quite similar in pronunciation to Japanese vowels.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12263960503354661690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-10268904265893583822010-12-17T16:37:12.770+00:002010-12-17T16:37:12.770+00:00John,
As a coda, two further illustrative example...John,<br /><br />As a coda, two further illustrative examples of monomoraic vs bimoraic minimal pairs are jooro 'watering pot' vs joroo 'licenced courtesan', and shoojo 'young girl' vs shoojoo 'orangutan'. (One can envisage some interesting social faux pas with these pairs.)<br /><br />Sourced from Len Walsh 'Read Japanese Today'.James Forresthttp://uk.yahoo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-47224991587989104272010-12-14T22:00:17.760+00:002010-12-14T22:00:17.760+00:00BTW John. I should also have said that your statem...BTW John. I should also have said that your statement that the bimoraic nature of the long vowels "is reflected in the kana syllabaries, where they are written as a sequence of two characters" is a bit misleading, since it is only in the hiragana syllabary that they are consistently written with a vowel symbol as the second character, as in the examples you give. The katakana syllabary <i>may</i> represent them like that, again for morphological reasons, but the i macron which I say "is quite usual for romanization of katakana rather than the more morphological hiragana" actually reflects the use in katakana of a similar all-purpose length-marking symbol for all the vowels rather than doubling them.mallambhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07086916400059545681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-55889300569642248522010-12-14T21:27:53.151+00:002010-12-14T21:27:53.151+00:00And I should have said, "If Tookyookko freaks...And I should have said, "If Tookyookko freaks anyone out, what about Rondonkko 'Londoner'?"mallambhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07086916400059545681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-47336892517311460342010-12-14T21:24:41.650+00:002010-12-14T21:24:41.650+00:00I don't know where to begin with this thread, ...I don't know where to begin with this thread, but OK, army:<br /><i>Also, is actually a geminated vowel followed by a geminated consonant impossible, even in compounds? </i><br /><br />No. Alexandre's 'iitte' is fine, tho it's not just across a morpheme boundary but across a word boundary. (I do have definitions for these things.) For a morpheme boundary one need look no further than Tookyookko "Tokyoite".<br /><br />Not using the macron for i as with the other vowels passeth all understanding, but may have had something to do with ii so often involving a morpheme boundary. It is not merely typographical: i macron is quite usual for romanization of katakana rather than the more morphological hiragana.<br /><br />It looks almost as if the kanji characters for torii (shall we say "bird perch"?) may originally have been some sort of joke, doesn't it ? They seem quite disrepectful for what it actually is. <br /><br />John,<br /><i>In LPD I give the usual anglicization, which is ˈtɔːriiː, though arguably ˈtɒriː would be a more consistent reflection of the Japanese pronunciation.</i><br /><br />I think your usual anglicization is fine, but ˈtɒri.i would be a more consistent reflection of the Japanese pronunciation than ˈtɒriː, and I feel ˈtɒri.i is what an honorary Japanese like me is actually likely to say.<br /><br /><i>In IPA we write ii ee aa oo uu</i><br /><br />As we must, in order to be able to mark the accentual behaviour in terms of moras, unless IPA is to have the unwisdom to adopt polytonic Greek diacritics! But more to the point, so does Kunreishiki, the ill-starred Government romanization standard.mallambhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07086916400059545681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-62634923559456873162010-12-14T20:11:26.802+00:002010-12-14T20:11:26.802+00:00Most people know how to pronounce the name of the ...Most people know how to pronounce the name of the Nintendo Wii.<br /><br />There are Linnaean names adding a Latinate -i to a Japanese name ending in -ii, to give -iii. <a href="http://jeff560.tripod.com/words7.html" rel="nofollow">This page</a> lists Tudicla ishiii, Coccophagus ishiii, and Semicytherura miii. How would Book at Bedtime handle those?mollymoolynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-58027882690936733292010-12-14T16:50:49.898+00:002010-12-14T16:50:49.898+00:00Does anyone know why torii is written with those t...Does anyone know why torii is written with those two characters? I guess tori [bird] + i [stem of iru] would give the reading, but the meanings seem quite arbitrary...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-24854716398994507852010-12-14T15:39:50.836+00:002010-12-14T15:39:50.836+00:00Oh dear. This sounds like a condition I've alr...Oh dear. This sounds like a condition I've already seen in a few people and which I've coined <i>xenolinguistic dyslexia</i>: the inability to process foreign words causing the speaker to assume the most unlikely and most asinine pronunciation rules possible as a coping mechanism.<br /><br />Pronouncing <i>torii</i> as /ˈtɔːriaɪ/ smells of stale monolingualism. I'd be surprised if the narrator ever saw a travel show, let alone an Asian. Catty? Perhaps. Lol.Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-71790421830126671472010-12-14T15:26:56.328+00:002010-12-14T15:26:56.328+00:00You do hear things like "tte iu to", whe...You do hear things like "tte iu to", where the part that should precede "tte" is omitted, effectively creating a geminate in the onset position. If the preceding word was a long vowel, say "ii", you'd get "iitte iu to". But this is across morphemes and it's not a compound.Alexandrehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03690416393726608647noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-50345987684754824282010-12-14T13:01:15.882+00:002010-12-14T13:01:15.882+00:00@army1987: yes, in Japanese, geminated vowels foll...@army1987: yes, in Japanese, geminated vowels followed by geminated consonants are impossible (outside of onomatopoeia and the like, which often has laxer phonological rules in many languages).<br /><br />And perhaps especially in compounds: (non-onomatopoetic) morphemes can't start with geminate consonants by themselves, and (to my knowledge) only do so in compounds if the first component has a "geminating" ending: usually an underlying -ku -ti -tu.<br /><br />There are doublets where a morpheme sometimes shows up with a long final vowel and sometimes with a geminater, such as 合 (gou- as in gougi "consultation" vs. ga'-/ka'- as in gasshoudan "choir" or kassen "battle") or 坊 (bou- as in bouzu "Buddhist priest, bonze" or bouya "boy" vs. bo'- as in botchan "son").<br /><br />While I'm not sure of the exact significance of such pairs, to the best of my knowledge, long vowel + geminate consonant simply doesn't work, especially at morpheme boundaries.Philip Newtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17991519523477002229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-36149663295099032052010-12-14T12:48:30.237+00:002010-12-14T12:48:30.237+00:00“In the usual Hepburn romanization of Japanese, wh...“In the usual Hepburn romanization of Japanese, while the long versions of a e o u are written ā ē ō ū, the long i is written ii rather than the logical ī.”<br /><br />Is it? I had never noticed that.<br />Also, is actually a geminated vowel followed by a geminated consonant impossible, even in compounds?army1987noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-33648478791955865612010-12-14T12:32:20.293+00:002010-12-14T12:32:20.293+00:00You're right, Philip - there are clear paralle...You're right, Philip - there are clear parallels so I suppose it still makes sense to apply the term in English. I was just being pedantic.<br /><br />Also, reading up on Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_%28linguistics%29" rel="nofollow">Mora (linguistics)</a>, it sounds as if there is some working definition of morae in English. Does anyone know more about this? How are morae defined in English and what is this concept used for?Petehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13722482936100504510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-42730391637789691852010-12-14T11:59:27.412+00:002010-12-14T11:59:27.412+00:00@Pete: one might as well say that since English do...@Pete: one might as well say that since English doesn't have the concept of morae (which determine "long" and "short" / "heavy" and "light" syllables in Latin or Greek, depending on "the length of time taken to pronounce each syllable"), it's hard to see how the iambic pentameter format could meaningfully be applied to English poetry.<br /><br />English haiku and Japanese haiku are not identical in form, sure: but there are clear parallels between what's called "haiku" in the context of Japanese and what's called "haiku" in the context of English.Philip Newtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17991519523477002229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-26527061343027715382010-12-14T11:45:13.851+00:002010-12-14T11:45:13.851+00:00A common misconception is that the haiku is a poem...A common misconception is that the haiku is a poem of 17 syllables in the pattern 5-7-5. A haiku actually contains 17 morae, not 17 syllables (unless it happens to be made up entirely of monomoraic syllables).<br /><br />Since English doesn't have the concept of morae, it's hard to see how the haiku format could meaningfully be applied to English poetry.Petehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13722482936100504510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-62133529814466226332010-12-14T10:00:36.653+00:002010-12-14T10:00:36.653+00:00And with bimoraic consonants, you have:
kite kuda...And with bimoraic consonants, you have:<br /><br />kite kudasai "please come"<br />kiite kudasai "please listen"<br />kitte kudasai "please cut"<br /><br />(But no *"kiitte kudasai", which would be possible in Finnish but not in Japanese.)<br /><br />On another note, the treatment of orthographic "y" in Japanese transcriptions is also variable: some English speakers pronounce it as a vowel, leading to things like "tokey-o" and "kye-oh-to" for two big cities in Japan.Philip Newtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17991519523477002229noreply@blogger.com