Talk:Japanese phonology

Moraic consonants

@Fdom5997, could you clarify what useful information you think I removed in this diff? Since it involved adding separate sections for the moraic nasal and moraic obstruent, some information relevant to only one of these was put in the appropriate section. For example, I did not remove the examples [sanneɴ] 三年, sannen, 'three years' and 三枚, sanmai, 'three sheets' from the article: they remained in the appropriate section for the moraic nasal, along with new examples I added for this sound before other consonants.

When you partially reverted me, you re-added these examples under the section for the moraic obstruent, as well as re-adding the examples [sat̚.tɕi] 察知, satchi, 'inference' and 一歳, issai, 'one year old. So all of those are now listed twice in the article: do you feel that is really necessary? I did remove the phonemic transcriptions from the table, but they remain in the article in the paragraph following the table. You also duplicated the sentence "The phonemic analysis of moraic consonants is disputed."

I did remove one of the old examples, [ip̚.pai] 一杯, ippai, 'one cupful', because the analysis of geminate [pp] is a bit more complicated (as it has limited contrast with singleton [h], some more abstract analyses treat them as somehow belonging to the same phoneme) and it seemed more straightforward and therefore better to use [aka] 垢, aka, 'dirt' and [ak̚ka] 悪化, akka, 'worsening', a minimal pair supplied by Vance, as an example of a geminate plosive. Urszag (talk) 03:29, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, if you simply simplified it, then there should not be anything wrong there. But I think you should stop removing information that is already there. If you are going to add info, then go ahead. But you shouldn’t need to keep removing information here. Fdom5997 (talk) 03:35, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I apologize for how these big edits can make it difficult to tell whether information was removed or just rearranged. My goal wasn't to remove information, just to rearrange it into a format that I thought might be more readable. I will make another edit and only remove the portions of the article that I think are currently duplicated (so there should be no loss of information): look it over and see if you agree.--Urszag (talk) 03:39, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Juhhari

The sokuonbin (sandhi gemination) of 十 jū as /(d)ʑuQ/ as in juhhari is proscribed on the basis that /uː/ does not become /uQ/ in other words, and /(d)ʑiQ/ is the prescribed form, but AFAIK nobody says jihhari aside from trained professionals. Nardog (talk) 19:51, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. After I edited that citation, I did a web search and saw a bit more about the pronunciation of 十 as /(d)ʑuQ/, e.g. 二十歳 (mentioned on Wiktionary). Other websites that mention it are HiNative, Reddit, this website. It sounds like some dictionaries recognize it now, but I haven't had time to find a citation covering that topic yet. In any case, I think it's clear that juhhari is genuinely the form that is being mentioned in the context of this discussion. Does jihhari exist even as a prescribed form, or would the prescribed form be jūhari? That's what jisho gives in its entry for the sentence "今日の一針、明日の十針。" (It cites Tatoeba, but confusingly, on that site the pronunciation of 十針 is shown as tohari.)--Urszag (talk) 20:58, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

jihhari is the prescribed form AFAIU. That sentence is a fixed phrase and 十針 is read as tohari apparently. Nardog (talk) 21:07, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Pitch accent clarification

"An initial unaccented mora isn't always pronounced with low pitch when it occurs as part of a heavy syllable. Specifically, when the second mora of an accent phrase is /R/ (the latter part of a long vowel) or /N/ (the moraic nasal), the first two moras are optionally either LH (low-high) or HH (high-high). In contrast, when the second mora is /Q/ the first two moras are LL (low-low). When the second mora is /i/, initial lowering seems to apply as usual to the first mora only, LH (low-high)."

I've read this several times and can't make heads or tails of it. Japanese pitch accent doesn't include the words "bimoraic" or even "heavy" so I'm not sure where these diverged. Clarifications, examples, or redirection appreciated! DAVilla (talk) 07:53, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

This is talking about words like the following examples from the pitch accent article: kōban (first syllable is kō, which ends in /R/), manga (first syllable is man, which ends in /N/), seppuku (first syllable is sep, which ends in /Q/) and aijin (first syllable is ai, which ends in /i/). Words like kōban and manga start out with an HH or optionally LH pitch pattern, words like seppuku start with an LLH pitch pattern, and words like aijin start with an LH pitch pattern (these patterns apply when words start with a syllable of this form that is unaccented).--Urszag (talk) 11:00, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Vowel nasalization

Regarding the recent edits by an IP who commented "Fixed incorrect information. Japanese's lack of nasalization can be seen objectively in MRI scans", but without adding additional sources. I have noticed contradictions between what different sources say about vowel nasalization in Japanese, and some of the previously cited sources were old and possibly outdated or based on impressionistic rather than quantitative analysis (e.g. Akamatsu 1997 pp 57, 298). So I'm not going to entirely revert the IP edits. Nevertheless, the statement "vowels next to nasal consonants do not exhibit nasalization" contradicts the currently cited source, Vance (2008), pp. 56–59, which says "a Japanese vowel is nasalized when it immediately precedes a syllable-final nasal consonant". To the IP editor, please find a source to back up the assertion that vowels are not nasalized even before syllable-final nasal consonants. The article would benefit from more recent, comprehensive sources on this topic, but we can't say something that isn't verifiable. Urszag (talk) 18:43, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

This is a different computer, but that's very reasonable criticism. I used https://rtmridb.ninjal.ac.jp/ to see MRI footage. I also wasn't fully correct. The ん sound does cause nasalization of the previous vowel if it is followed by a vowel or fricative, or preceded by a nasal consonant. On the other hand, if neither of these conditions are met, nasalization doesn't happen until the ん itself. Nasalization also doesn't occur before normal nasal consonants like ま. Words I looked at included hema, kaNtaN, siNsoH, niNmu, aNzeN, and kaNbu. The website dates itself to April 1st 2024, so it's certainly quite new. I'm not experienced with Wikipedia editing and apologize for the trouble, but I want this article to be as accurate as possible. 2605:AD80:14:7010:5044:583C:AAD3:825B (talk) 06:39, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing me towards this resource! To give some background about Wikipedia policies, the norm is to make sure statements in articles can be supported by reliable secondary sources. That means any generalizations that can be made from this interesting data can't be put in the article until we can find a source to cite for analysis of this sort of data. I know having inaccurate or incomplete information in the article is frustrating, but the goal of that policy is to avoid the risk of having articles be based on amateur analysis rather than expert consensus. I'm going to try to see if I can find some papers that discuss these contextual factors to nasalization of the vowel before ん.--Urszag (talk) 22:57, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Spinning off an onbin article

Since the article is getting on the longer side now, I was thinking it might make sense to create a separate article about onbin that could get more into the details of it as a historical process (rather than just part of the current language). I started a draft here: User:Urszag/Onbin but I wanted to share this suggestion now since I see @Mazamadao has been working now on expanding the onbin section. My thought would be that specific examples of lexical onbin, such as those currently listed in the "-hito" section (shirōto, etc.) are more a matter of diachronic change than synchronic phonology, and so could be moved into a new onbin article (I would also move dialect verb forms, since this article is not intended to comprehensively describe dialects other than standard Tokyo-based Japanese), while a summary of onbin changes, and examples of grammatical onbin in standard Japanese inflection, should remain in this article. Does anyone object to moving that material once a new article is created? Urszag (talk) 08:28, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I published Onbin as its own article. Since nobody commented, I went ahead and moved the specific examples of onbin in compounds of hito/-bito to that page.--Urszag (talk) 06:41, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Where are the consonants for じ・じゃ・じゅ・じょ and し・しゃ・しゅ・しょ?

They are part of Japanese Language but can't be found in the consonants table anywhere. Why? 2804:14C:120:2EC6:1CF3:C0BF:3BF6:1BA3 (talk) 05:19, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

They're there. They're in parentheses because they are not phonemic (in the analysis adopted by the article). Nardog (talk) 06:08, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

I thought it was really confusing for a layperson to understand where they were. The article states for instance that the Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative is present in the language but doesn't make clear which sound in Japanese it corresponds to with examples.

I'd like to suggest the adoption of a table like the one found on the consonants section of this article Standard Chinese phonology. In this table examples are given showing which consonants in Mandarin corresponds to each sound in the IPA, withe example words and even pronunciation and comparison to English. That would be sure to make it more understandable for people not so familiar with the IPA transcription. I, for instance, couldn't tell which sound the Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative was, because I expected the sound instead to be Voiceless postalveolar fricative. 2804:14C:120:2EC6:1CF3:C0BF:3BF6:1BA3 (talk) 19:29, 25 December 2024 (UTC)