Japanese Language

Damkerng T.

2:46 AM

@Kaji @snailboat I learned hiragana from this chart!

Anonymous

Yay!

Damkerng T.

I have another one for katakana. Going to learn that soon. :D

Anonymous

My friend may be joining us on Japanese.SE once her classes start :-)

Damkerng T.

Yay!

I found two more phrases in the app:

> 利用規約及びプライバシーポリシー
利用する

Google Translate says they mean:

> Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Use

Anonymous

At this point, it might be good to try to recognize 1. katakana 2. する :-)

Anonymous

2:55 AM

Out of the things you quoted

Damkerng T.

I agree. But the texts appear on buttons and I'm sure not which one I should click. :)

(I was afraid that clicking a wrong button could cost me some money. :)

Anonymous

Oh!

Damkerng T.

I guess this is a good example for する. :D

Oh, 利 is pronounced り！ I think it's くんよみ。

Ah! I get it! ライバシーポリシー reads "privacy policy"!

Anonymous

り is its おんよみ

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yes, with the initial プ before it :-)

Anonymous

3:08 AM

ぷらいばしーぽりしー

Damkerng T.

Eh? I might mix up the two (くんよみ and おんよみ).

Anonymous

There it is in hiragana

Damkerng T.

はーい！　ありがとう！

Anonymous

おん readings are 'sound' readings from Chinese

Anonymous

You'll note that it's quite similar to Chinese li (falling tone)

Damkerng T.

3:09 AM

Ahh... so it's pronounced ri not because it has り inside.

Anonymous

No, that points the arrow of causality the wrong way :-)

Anonymous

You see, hiragana り is simplified from 利! :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Hah!

Anonymous

Katakana リ too, which looks very similar as I'm sure you'll see

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

3:12 AM

See, way back when, there were a couple ways to write Japanese

Anonymous

One was to more or less write it like it was Classical Chinese

Anonymous

Another way, though, used the kanji for their sounds only

Damkerng T.

Looks like they both won.

Anonymous

And so they took the kanji 利, with its sound り from Chinese, and used it to represent the sound, ignoring the meaning!

Anonymous

So り and リ were born

Damkerng T.

3:13 AM

Ahh

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Contact with Chinese had a profound effect on Japanese, including the writing systems as they evolved

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Japanese today has many words borrowed from Chinese, and so the way the morphemes are put together reflect the way they were combined in Chinese

Anonymous

These, of course, use おんよみ in Japanese

Anonymous

They are called 漢語（かんご）

Anonymous

Japan has made lots of its own かんご, but they're mostly put together the same way they would be in Chinese

Anonymous

3:17 AM

mdbg.net/chindict/…

Anonymous

Here you can see 利用　＝　りよう　＝　lìyòng

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

You'll come to know which are おん and which are くん

Damkerng T.

I didn't know this word (use) in Chinese, so I couldn't guess it right.

Anonymous

For now, that's rather secondary information

Anonymous

3:19 AM

You need to learn some basic words and sentence patterns and such.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Generally, since おん readings come from Chinese, and each character in Chinese represents a single syllable, the same is (almost) true in Japanese

Anonymous

The difference is that Japanese has very few possible syllable CODAS, so the readings often ended up with extra vowels after them

Anonymous

So おん readings are pretty much all either one or two morae long

Damkerng T.

And the sound in Japanese is close to the one for the same character in Chinese, I think.

Anonymous

3:23 AM

And the second mora either has /u/ or /i/ if it's an epenthetic vowel, or /N/

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

おん readings often have long vowels of various sorts

Anonymous

So pretty much every おん reading is either one mora, or if it's two morae, the second one is (1) part of a long vowel, (2) a consonant plus epenthetic /u/ or /i/, (3) nasal /N/

Anonymous

A lot of them have sounds that are quite rare in native Japanese words.

Anonymous

You see, pre-Old Japanese didn't allow two vowels in a row

Anonymous

3:26 AM

It was always CVCVCVCV, pretty much.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

These days there are some native words with long vowels for various reasons, most commonly the loss of a consonant over time

Anonymous

But native words still generally speaking have that sort of CVCVCV sound to them

Anonymous

Words like たてまつる or こころみる

Anonymous

Or さしあげる or おこのみやき

Anonymous

3:28 AM

So when you hear とうきょう with its two long vowels and a glide, you think "Oh, that sounds like おん readings, two long syllables taken from Chinese morphemes"

Anonymous

When you hear いつのまに or さかのぼる, you think "Oh, CVCVCVCV, these are more likely native Japanese words"

Damkerng T.

Hmm... Is it おん reading?

Anonymous

Besides which, most Japanese verbs are native

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. とうきょう is made of two Sino-Japanese morphemes which correspond to おん readings of kanji

Anonymous

東京（とうきょう）

Damkerng T.

3:30 AM

Ahh

Anonymous

So when we compare our examples from the other day

Anonymous

殺人（さつじん） "murder"

Anonymous

人殺し　＝　ひとごろし

Anonymous

Same kanji for both words, but one is from Sino-Japanese, the other using native words

Anonymous

Can you see which is which? There are several hints.

Damkerng T.

3:32 AM

Ahh... I think I get the idea.

Anonymous

Yay

Damkerng T.

殺人（さつじん） is onyomi!

Anonymous

Yes, that's right

Anonymous

Can you see how to split up the word between the two kanji?

Damkerng T.

Eh?

Anonymous

3:34 AM

Each おん reading can only be one or two morae long.

Damkerng T.

Ah, I see.

さつ-じん

Oh, actually it's quite straightforward! 殺人 = kill man!

Anonymous

さつ now corresponds to shā in Mandarin, but it was srɛt in Middle Chinese, and modern Japanese doesn't allow that syllable final /t/, so it got a /u/ added to the end

Anonymous

Yes!

Anonymous

There are several ways that かんご can be put together. In other words, ways that おんよみ can be put together

Anonymous

One of them is verb-object, like in this compound.

Anonymous

3:38 AM

Of course, in Japanese 殺人 is a single word and neither half is a "verb", but it contains a verbal morpheme and an object morpheme

Anonymous

And you can use this to understand it

Anonymous

If you wanted to understand it by turning it into Japanese, you would switch them around (to reflect Japanese word order rather than Chinese) and replace the おん readings with くん readings

Anonymous

So!　殺人（さつじん）　　→　　人を殺すこと　　（ひと　を　ころす　こと）

Anonymous

And if you look up 殺人 in a Japanese monolingual dictionary

Anonymous

Odds are good that'll be the exact definition: 人を殺すこと。

Damkerng T.

3:40 AM

A-ha!

(Still not sure why we need すこと though.)

Anonymous

So, in Japanese, 殺人 is a single word.

Anonymous

And it's a noun. It represents murder, killing a person

Anonymous

We swapped the readings, but we also added を

Anonymous

Our new version is not a word, but a phrase

Anonymous

And 殺す is a verb

Anonymous

3:45 AM

We didn't "add す". ころす is the reading that replaced さつ

Anonymous

ころす is the verb "kill"

Anonymous

Thing is, when you wrote ころす with kanji, the kanji can only "cover up" the first two kana :-)

Anonymous

ころす becomes 殺す

Anonymous

That's because the final kana changes when you conjugate the verb: 殺す koros-u 殺さない koros-anai

Anonymous

So we have to write that part in kana.

Damkerng T.

3:47 AM

Oh! This is very profound!

Anonymous

And we had to add を because we have a phrase now, and ひと is the direct object of the verb.

Anonymous

[　ひとを　ころす　]　こと

Anonymous

At the end, we have a noun-like thingy, which we can call a "nominalizer"

Anonymous

It turns the entire phrase into a noun, basically.

Anonymous

Remember our original word was a noun, "murder", not a verb phrase

Damkerng T.

3:48 AM

I can see it now!

Anonymous

So to express the same thing with a phrase, we need to turn the whole thing into a noun.

Anonymous

Japanese has a lot of vocabulary from Chinese. But Japanese speakers also understand how the morphemes from Chinese fit together, and they can understand new combinations they haven't seen before

Anonymous

And once you learn a bit of vocabulary, you'll naturally start to see patterns and be able to make reasonable guesses too :-)

Damkerng T.

Does Japanese use all of most common Chinese characters?

@snailboat Yay!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It uses a lot of kanji that are common hanzi in Chinese

Anonymous

3:55 AM

But they don't have the same frequency distribution

Anonymous

And Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese have different forms for (what are historically) the same characters

Anonymous

For example, in Simplified Chinese, instead of 殺人 you would write 杀人

Anonymous

In Traditional Chinese, it looks the same as in Japanese.

Damkerng T.

I guess that Japanese uses the traditional ones.

nods

Anonymous

Not exactly. Japanese has its own simplifications.

Damkerng T.

3:57 AM

Oh!

Anonymous

Traditional Chinese uses 鐵 for tiě, but in Japanese it's 鉄（てつ）

Anonymous

In Simplified Chinese, you find 紩

Damkerng T.

Oh! This is confusing!

Anonymous

Japanese kanji have their own identity

Anonymous

In fact, the Japanese invented some of their own kanji, like 辻

Damkerng T.

4:00 AM

Oh! Neat! :-)

Anonymous

And kanji are used rather differently in some cases, including some characters that are very common in Chinese

Anonymous

Do you know Chinese 的?

Damkerng T.

No. :(

Anonymous

It's a very common function word, which can be used something like English 's

Anonymous

Or like Japanese の

Damkerng T.

4:03 AM

Oh, it's that de.

Anonymous

But in Japanese, ～的（てき） is a suffix meaning um, what's the best way to put it? EDICT has "-like" as a gloss

Anonymous

It's kind of like English -ic(al)

Damkerng T.

A-ha!

Anonymous

Like:
物理　　（ぶつり）　　　　physics
物理的　（ぶつりてき)　 physical

Anonymous

At any rate, it's really quite different from Chinese 的, and less common, at that :-) (But not uncommon)

Damkerng T.

4:08 AM

Is it the same one used in 帰ってきたウルトラマン?

Anonymous

No, that string of sounds crosses word boundaries

Anonymous

かえって　きた

Damkerng T.

Oh! :D

I just thought that I saw it somewhere before. :D

Anonymous

You did see those sounds! But not the same morpheme :-)

Anonymous

Did you copy + paste that?

Damkerng T.

4:11 AM

Yes. I searched for きた ultraman and browsed through images. :-)

Anonymous

Ahh, good :-) I was going to say: When typing Japanese, be careful converting to kanji if you aren't sure they're the right kanji. It's better to use kana than to use the wrong kanji.

Anonymous

Blindly converting to kanji can get you in lots of trouble :-)

Anonymous

Unless you do it as a joke :-)

Damkerng T.

へへ

Anonymous

Here's an example. You know the word はい, of course!

Damkerng T.

4:12 AM

はい！

Anonymous

Well, はい is also a Sino-Japanese word meaning "lung"

Damkerng T.

あああ！

Anonymous

肺！

Anonymous

"Lung!" ;-)

Anonymous

灰！　"Ash!"

Damkerng T.

4:13 AM

LOL

Anonymous

That's another word which would be はい in kana.

Anonymous

Of course, no one would ever mix up your はい！ and think you meant "Lung!" ;-)

Anonymous

But if you write 肺！, well, it's understandable but very silly :-)

Damkerng T.

Potentially good for causing a good laugh. :)

Anonymous

Oh, talking about Japanese is fun!

Anonymous

4:19 AM

I have some more studying to do tonight :-)

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Kaji

廃！

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Thank you very much! I learned a lot of good things!

@Kaji Lung!

Anonymous

Oh, too bad Ash wasn't in here when I said 灰！ :-)

Damkerng T.

Hee

Kaji

4:21 AM

Think one of my favorite stories of fun with kanji (well, technically hanzi) involves making a coherent sentence out of 子子子子子子子子子子子子.

Wait, no, turns out that's a Japanese story after all!

Ono no Takamura

also known as was an early Heian period scholar and poet. Life Takamura is a descendant of Ono no Imoko who served as Kenzuishi, and his father was Ono no Minemori. He is the grandfather of Ono no Michikaze, one of the . In 834 he was appointed to Kintōshi, but in 838 after a quarrel with the envoy, Fujiwara no Tsunetsugu, he gave up his professional duties pretending to be ill, and attracted the ire of retired Emperor Saga, who sent him to Oki Province. Within two years he regained the graces of the court and returned to the capital where he was promoted to Sangi. Takamura is the sub...

neko no ko no koneko, shishi no ko no kojishi

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. 肺 is "lung" and 灰 is "ash" but 廃 is a bound morpheme and isn't usually a meaningful word on its own

Kaji

It has the meaning of "abolish", and is usually prepended to a kanji indicating some sort of organization (部、社, etc.)

Damkerng T.

あはは

Anonymous

It appears in relatively common words like 廃止 and 廃棄, but you don't really need to learn these yet

Anonymous

You can prioritize more common words :-)

Damkerng T.

4:25 AM

Oh, Takamura's wit turned out to be a good thing.

Kaji

Classical Japanese is a lot of fun, especially if you get into the stories behind the authors

Anonymous

5:25 AM

Ah, learning Japanese is fun :-)

Anonymous

5:41 AM

Hey, the entire section on ～ている here is online at Google Books: books.google.com/books?id=0eprLex8sr0C&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82

Anonymous

I have both of those books, and I keep being surprised by how useful they are! :-)

Anonymous

I'm going through Sugita's dissertation and wanted to cross-reference the Japanese terminology

Anonymous

>　　状態動詞　Ｘ
>　　継続動詞　～ている　進行中　　　　　　　習慣　経験
>　　瞬間動詞　～ている　　　　　　結果残存　習慣　経験

jkerian

6:05 AM

@snailboat: Am I failing at the moderator UI, or is it just my memory failing in my old age. I thought we actually did have a button somewhere for turning a comment into an answer.

Anonymous

@jkerian I'm afraid not. It only works the other direction.

jkerian

ahh... senility setting in. Oh well, at least I get to be grumpy old man now

Kaji

Someone does seem to live up to his name, and makes quite a habit of that

jkerian

This most recent example question actually fails my personal bar for "not a pure translation question"... so the amount of work involved is higher than simply copying the answer. :/

I do occasionally wonder if the other names at the top of this acknowledgement were his mentioned 'colleagues', or other people who added their names to the list without looking at what it said

Anonymous

6:21 AM

Ha

Anonymous

6:34 AM

@Anthony Can I assume your ひゃ is a typo? :-)

Anthony

7:06 AM

Please do.

非回答者

7:55 AM

@Kaji At least I give "real" information. You keep posting and deleting incorrect information and that does harm. Stop talking about me here as well.

Kaji

To clarify, I did not intend it as any sort of offense, merely an observation. It creates something of an awkward situation when someone is thinking about posting an answer and finds they'd merely be repeating what someone already said in a comment.

As to posting and deleting, I've been taught things specific ways, and I'm open to revising my knowledge when I find it to be in error. That's how learning works.

Sometimes we just happen to learn that we have more to learn than we thought we did in some areas.

Honestly, most of my recent deletions have been in an effort to move away from the practice of testing answers out in comments, which I've seen thoroughly discouraged on the Meta site.

ssb

1:47 PM

I wonder what connection 色 has with the idea of various things (色々)

Could it just be the idea of varied things having different colors?

Anonymous

The oldest definition I see in 日国 is さまざまの色。各種の色。 with the more general さまざま。種々。 appearing later

Anonymous

So I guess it's a reduplicative plural which was then used figuratively

ssb

2:49 PM

I'm worried that with this "Japanese principle" question we have no way of knowing the correct answer

Austin French

Regardless of if we can answer... Probably would be a good question for the proposed Japanese Culture site.

ssb

筋を通す might be a good candidate but there's no way we can know without having the video to check

Eiríkr Útlendi

5:12 PM

Re: applying kanji to kana spellings willy-nilly and the fun that can be had. :)

Anonymous

6:59 PM

Seriously? "HOT META POSTS"? :-)

Damkerng T.

おハイや　スネールボーツさん！

Anonymous

7:20 PM

Hehe! おはよう！

Anonymous

Typically you find /u/ as the epenthetic vowel of choice, but after /t/ or /d/ you insert /o/:

Anonymous

「ボート」

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

Oh, I should use hiragana still--I forgot

Anonymous

ぼーと

Anonymous

7:24 PM

McDonald's: まくどなるど　(note the missing plural marker, which is usual)

Damkerng T.

It's okay. I should get used to it anyway. :-)

Anonymous

Here, /u/ is inserted after /k/ and /r/, but /o/ is inserted after /d/

Anonymous

Well, it won't do much good if you can't read it :-)

Anonymous

Have you started learning katakana?

Anonymous

マクドナルド

Damkerng T.

7:26 PM

Not really. I was looking for more materials today. :-)

Anonymous

You can find katakana to practice everywhere! :-) mcdonalds.co.jp

Damkerng T.

Somehow I think the design of most Japanese websites is usually pretty good!

@snailboat I guess that you will like this anime: あの花 (considering that you like けいおん).

Anonymous

Ohh, I think that series is a little different

Anonymous

あの花 is sad

Damkerng T.

Ahh, you've watched it already!

Anonymous

7:39 PM

[ [ あの-ひみ-た ] はな-のなまえ ]-を [ ぼく-たち ]-は [ まだ ] しら-ない

Damkerng T.

By the way, I'm not sure what this あ means.

Anonymous

It's part of the こそあ series (near, middle, far)

Anonymous

あの 'that'

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

(but probably more distant than その 'that')

Anonymous

7:40 PM

You can treat こ・そ・あ as "nouns" although they aren't complete words on their own, they're bound morphemes

Anonymous

and の as the genitive particle

Damkerng T.

In Thai, the anime's title was translated to "Flowers of Yesterday".

Anonymous

So it's こ-の, そ-の, あ-の

Anonymous

あの日　（あのひ）　＝　"that day"

Anonymous

Don't take the thing I said about "distance" too seriously--I'm oversimplifying :-)

Damkerng T.

7:41 PM

:) nods

Anonymous

Kind of like how in English this and that have various uses

Anonymous

The full series is こそあど, where ど is like English wh-

Anonymous

So どの is like "which"

Damkerng T.

7:56 PM

I think Japanese anime feels different when it's being dubbed in English. (youtube.com/watch?v=HjLE8BmWfKA)

Anonymous

When I was taking French class in high school, we watched Disney movies dubbed in French

Anonymous

They had a very different feel

Anonymous

I think each language has its own feel

Anonymous

Oh, I saw Summer Wars!

Damkerng T.

Even when it has exactly the same visualization, sound effects, and background music.

Yay!

Anonymous

7:59 PM

I didn't like it as much as 時をかける少女（ときをかけるしょうじょ）

Damkerng T.

Oh, I like that one better too!

I could watch only about the latter 2/3 part of Summer Wars, and it has never rerun again.

Anonymous

Did you ever see ふしぎの海のナディア？　　（海　＝　うみ）

Anonymous

►

Damkerng T.

Oh, I haven't, but it looks good to watch. :)

Anonymous

A lot of songs like that have subtitles you can read along with :-) (Although you'll just have to listen for the kanji you don't know yet)

Anonymous

8:05 PM

You'll notice some differences in pronunciation in songs, if you pay close attention

Damkerng T.

I found this earlier today: youtube.com/watch?v=lJ8n4ROULd4

It took me about 5 seconds before I could realize that I was watching subtitles in two languages.

What you had taught me about reading kanji characters was very useful!

(Thanks a lot!)

(Oh, by the way, I found another version of that song in Thai too. It's a fansub version, and the fansub singer literally cried while she was singing the song. :)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, yes, that video's title and description appear to be in Chinese (I didn't let the video play yet)

Damkerng T.

8:23 PM

In the subtitle they write "Ahh" as two あ, one large and one small.　I don't know how to write that with my Japanese keyboard.

Anonymous

Type axa あぁ

Anonymous

In general, x will get you a small letter.

Damkerng T.

あぁ

やった！

Anonymous

(On some OSes / input methods, you can use l instead, which people are quick to point out, but I feel it's best not to, because on other input methods la will give you ら rather than ぁ)

Damkerng T.

ありがとう！

Anonymous

8:27 PM

あぁ isn't really standard orthography, but you'll see it all the time anyway

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Oh, I got another question about those kana combinations. For example, しょ is one mora, I think. Is that correct?

Anonymous

Yes, that is correct.

Anonymous

All of the combinations with small ゃゅょ should be considered single morae

Anonymous

The difference is that there is a palatal glide inserted between the consonant and the vowel

Anonymous

The palatal glide can be thought of as the Japanese /i/ vowel quickly and smoothly transforming into the following vowel

Anonymous

8:31 PM

So きゅ starts like き and glides to う, all within the space of a single mora

Damkerng T.

kya, kyu, kyo, too, I think.

(They look a bit like two mora to me. :)

Anonymous

So hopefully with that in mind, you can see the reason for two things:

Anonymous

1. There's no such thing as *kyi (because you can't glide from /i/ to itself)

Anonymous

2. The kana before ゃゅょ is generally the /i/ column kana

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

8:33 PM

きゃ・ぎゃ・しゃ・じゃ・ちゃ・ぢゃ・にゃ・ひゃ・びゃ・ぴゃ・みゃ・りゃ

Damkerng T.

Is there any one not from the /i/ column? (I couldn't think of one.)

Anonymous

English speakers have a palatal glide to /u/, as in cute kjuːt, in Japanese キュート, so we're comfortable with the small ゅ glides, but we have a harder time with small ゃ and ょ and famously reanalyze them as /i.a/ and /i.o/ pairs (as in "Tokio" rather than to:kjo:)

Eiríkr Útlendi

@snailboat That looks like a visual play on Arabic calligraphy.

Damkerng T.

LOL

Anonymous

@EiríkrÚtlendi What, with the old form of 海?

Anonymous

8:37 PM

@DamkerngT. Generally no, but not everything you find written will follow standard orthography

Eiríkr Útlendi

even the font used for the hiragana

Anonymous

You should learn that it always follows い-column kana and be prepared to see occasional exceptions

Eiríkr Útlendi

plus the white-on-blue motif is very mediterranean / middle-eastern.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I see. Thanks!

Eiríkr Útlendi

@DamkerngT., the や・ゆ・よ glide sounds all start with a vowel a bit like /i/, so they only join up with the "i" kana.

Anonymous

8:39 PM

@EiríkrÚtlendi That is what I just explained :-)

Eiríkr Útlendi

huh, those comments of yours (about "*kyi" and the preceding two) weren't there a second ago... my browser or connection must be acting up.

Anonymous

9 mins ago, by snailboat

The palatal glide can be thought of as the Japanese /i/ vowel quickly and smoothly transforming into the following vowel

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hmm... I think I can't hear a /j/ sound in しょ.

Eiríkr Útlendi

sure, yes. it's that front vowel like /i/

/j/ is used to indicate the glide.

in careful speech especially, JA speakers will emphasize the /j/ in しゃ・しゅ・しょ

Damkerng T.

@EiríkrÚtlendi Ah, thank you! So in careful speech, しゃ will come out like shja, I guess?

Anonymous

8:42 PM

First, let's make a couple notational conventions clear

Eiríkr Útlendi

depending on the speaker and the casual / formal nature of the social context, しゃ・しゅ・しょ could be /ɕa ɕu ɕo/, or /ɕʲa ɕʲu ɕʲo/.

Anonymous

/j/ in IPA is what most anglophones think of as <y>

Eiríkr Útlendi

@snailboat: good idea. :)

Anonymous

And it's written y in many phonemic transcriptions

Damkerng T.

I like this [ɕʲa] too!

Eiríkr Útlendi

8:43 PM

(my bias is IPA -- but the beer is good too. ;) )

Damkerng T.

(Though I don't know how to write it myself. :)

Anonymous

Second, /j/ indicates a phonemic transcription, and the phonetic realization of a particular sequence with a phonemic glide might not phonetically have a glide

Damkerng T.

@EiríkrÚtlendi Of course! (about the beer. :)

Anonymous

These phonetic details should be written in []

Damkerng T.

@DamkerngT. Like ^that?

Anonymous

8:44 PM

(Japanese has no phonemic contrast between ɕ and ɕʲ, so it should not be written between slashes)

Eiríkr Útlendi

okay, to make sure I'm on the right page too, "phonemic" == how it parses meaning-wise, and uses // slashes, "phonetic" == how speakers actually pronounce it, and uses [] square brackets.

(I'd gotten lazy about // vs. [])

Anonymous

Phonetic transcriptions capture physical information, pronunciation with as much detail as you'd like to include (this is up to the transcriber), and appear between []

Anonymous

Phonemic transcriptions are a matter of theory and are intended to reflect the psychological reality of sounds

Damkerng T.

@EiríkrÚtlendi I understand them that way too.

Anonymous

Phonemes exist to the extent that we can find (hopefully systematic) phonemic contrasts between multiple words

Eiríkr Útlendi

8:46 PM

"phonemic contrast" == "change in sound that indicates change in meaning", yes?

Anonymous

Hmm. Sure.

Eiríkr Útlendi

not just allophonic, where "allophone" == "difference in sound that doesn't indicate difference in meaning"

Anonymous

In Thai, there are /pʰ/ and /p˭/ phonemes, because they're used to tell apart different words

Damkerng T.

Trying to make a [ɕʲa] sound is weird to me. I think I probably can't get it right.

Eiríkr Útlendi

so "jeechet" could be considered an allophone of "did you eat yet" for certain dialects of English. :)

Anonymous

8:47 PM

In English, [pʰ] and [p˭] are merely allophones of /p/

Anonymous

They're in complementary distribution and are entirely predictable and are never used to distinguish between two words

Anonymous

English pin has [pʰ], while spin has [p˭]

Damkerng T.

@EiríkrÚtlendi So it's true!? (I always doubt that.)

Anonymous

@EiríkrÚtlendi That is too big to be considered a phone of any sort

Anonymous

A phone is the smallest perceptible segment that can be identified

Damkerng T.

8:49 PM

Japanese has a sort of [p˭] too. Yay!

Eiríkr Útlendi

ah, yes, "phone" == one sound

so the phrase would be allophonic, comprising numerous allophones.

does that work?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yes, Japanese has very light aspiration / very small VOT

Anonymous

An allophone is a phone. An allophonic contrast is a non-phonemic contrast (one that doesn't have a minimal pair) between realizations of one phoneme

Eiríkr Útlendi

one such allophone would be "~d y~" becoming "~j~" in fast speech.

Anonymous

This is why I'm not comfortable with the "change in meaning" definition :-)

Eiríkr Útlendi

8:51 PM

"minimal pair" == "pair of words containing a difference in sound that indicates a difference in meaning"?

(swapping "change" for "difference")

Damkerng T.

test

Anonymous

Consider ˈaɪðɚ and ˈiːðɚ, forms in free variation for either. aɪ and iː are not allophones because they can be used to tell apart the minimal pair bike and beak

Anonymous

And since speakers of English are trained to spot the difference, we can tell apart the pronunciations fairly easily

Anonymous

In this case they make no difference in meaning

Anonymous

But that doesn't make the pair allophonic, because we process them as different sounds

Anonymous

8:55 PM

Whereas in pin and spin, we hear the same /p/ sound in both, unless we've learned a language with contrastive aspiration on p

Damkerng T.

Ahh... I think I have to excuse myself.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. おやすみなさい＾＾

Damkerng T.

Thank you very much @snailboat @EiríkrÚtlendi!

Anonymous

いえいえ＾＾

Damkerng T.

(Should I reply おやすみなさい with おやすみなさい in Japanese?)

Anonymous

8:56 PM

You can if you like!

Damkerng T.

おやすみなさい！

ありがとうございます！

Eiríkr Útlendi

@snailboat So "minimal pair" is not "pair of words", but cases where a pair of sounds is itself always contrastive?

Anonymous

9:19 PM

@EiríkrÚtlendi Well, a "minimal pair" generally is a pair that demonstrates a difference between two things, holding all other variables constant. Often those two things are phonemes

Anonymous

I can't use the word "always" because contrasts can be neutralized

Anonymous

For example, /t/ and /d/ can both be realized as [ɾ] in American English

Eiríkr Útlendi

then, cases where a pair of sounds is usually contrastive. :) the clear point I'm getting at here is that "minimal pair" is describing a pair of sounds, not a pair of words. am I right on that score?

Anonymous

A minimal pair is an example which distinguishes a pair of sounds, yes

Anonymous

@EiríkrÚtlendi If you'd like to actually diagram the sentence in your most recent answer, RSyntaxTree is a handy tool yohasebe.com/rsyntaxtree

Anonymous

9:30 PM

It works with Unicode and can render Japanese fine (but not with the default settings--make sure you pick JP-Gothic or such)

Anonymous

(I don't think you need to, I'm only pointing it out in case you wanted to :-)

Anonymous

9:45 PM

Although "minimal pair" is used to refer to any pair of examples which change in only one way, which can be used to establish a distinction

Anonymous

> That's what linguists call a minimal pair: the two expressions are the same except for a single contrasting feature, demonstrating that the feature in question cannot be finessed as a matter of fine phonetic detail but must play a crucial role in the phonology.

Anonymous

(I'm quoting Geoffrey Pullum on Language Log: languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3198 )

Eiríkr Útlendi

cool tool

thank you!

don't know if I have time now to learn it and edit,

that may have to wait until tonight

oofda -- how does one diagram a metaphor in a parallel construction?

Anonymous

10:02 PM

Ah, I wasn't sure exactly how you wanted to diagram it :-) I'm still trying to decide how I'd like to diagram Japanese

Eiríkr Útlendi

10:23 PM

Try this next string in RSyntaxTree -- does that structure make sense? And is there a better label for のように?

[S [META [NP [VP [ADV どうしようもなく^][V 流れる]][N 濁流]][like のように^]] [VP [NP [NP [ADJ 急激な][N 感情][GEN の]][OBJ 波を]][ADV 止められずに^][V いる]]]

it's inconsistent in the treatment of particles, needs refinement or simplification.

Anonymous

10:55 PM

Ah, I don't know :-)

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