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03 Japanese phonology: mora, rhythm, tones, ...




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This article is from the Japanese FAQ, by TANAKA Tomoyuki tanaka@cs.indiana.edu and Olaf Meeuwissen olaf@IMSL.shinshu-u.ac.jp with numerous contributions by others.

03 Japanese phonology: mora, rhythm, tones, ...

--- mora, mora-timing

Japanese words are made up of moras (or morae).
and syllables seem to be of lesser importance.

each mora gets equal time (isochronous moras).
see Robert Port, et al. "Evidence for mora timing in Japanese"
in JASA (Journal of Acoustical Society of America)
Vol 81, No 5, pp.1574-1585 (1987).

--- tones, H and L

most gairaigo words and end with the tones ...HHHLL
(and if longer than 3 moras begin with the tones LH).

--- 2-mora foot, 4-beat rhythm, stupidity of 5-7-5 haiku in English

2 moras constitutes a "foot" in Jp.
(example: in abbreviation/inversion
san | gura | su --> gura | san
2 moras move together. many examples like this.)

these 2-mora feet combine to form a 4-beat rhythm, the
basic rhythm/prosody of spoken Japanese.
the "7-5 chou" on the surface is really this 4-beat rhythm.
see Bekku Sadanori [book] "nihongo no rizumu" (1977).

so i say,
Haiku in English:
it's cute when children do it;
stupid for grown-ups.
(by TT)

as you can see, rhythmically 5-7-5 means nothing in English.
serious translators of haikus into English ignore 5-7-5.

--- Japanese spoken by gaijin tend to be 3-beat?

i was looking at "Chapter 4: stupidity of English haikus"
in Bekku's book (listed above) and found this:

Japanese spoken by English-speakers tend to be 3-beat.
examples:

	 	yoko   | HA: | ma
	 	kama   | KU: | ra
	 	o:     | FU: | na
  
	 	kama   | KA: | zee
	 	carry  | O:  | key
  
	 	tokoro | ZA: | wa

--- historical Japanese phonology: 8 vowels, instead of the current 5

in the Nara period (8th century) "Joudai nihongo" had
8 vowels. the current 5 + /i", e", o"/

but some argue that there were only 5.

--- historical Japanese phonology: H-line (ha-gyou)

before the Nara period, the current H-line (ha-gyou)
corresponded to /p/ sounds.
(this would mean that the word for "mother"
(now pronounced /haha/) was then pronounced /papa/.)

then H-line became /f/.
e.g.
fito (now pronounced hito (meaning "person"))
fana (now pronounced hana (meaning "flower"))

during the Edo period, H-line became the current /h/.

this explains some {rendaku}:
wari + hasi --> waribasi
/h/ (underlyingly /p/) becomes voiced to be /b/.

** info on Japanese phonology comes from
kubozono haruo, oota satosi
"on-in kouzou to akusento" (1998),
an exellent book which points out
commonalities between Japanese and English phonology.

 

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