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Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

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Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#91

Post by Ekaros »

jbs789 wrote: post #29

So do we know why? Apologies if I’ve missed this.

All humans share same vocal cords, breathing and tongue and mouth shape. For there you can derive some amount of sounds that travel reasonably well in air.

I would expect most of these sounds to follow similar rules. Sometimes there might be something like clicks, but in general similar sounds will be used. And certain styles will probably cluster as well.

In the end you have handful of options and thousands of languages. So some must end up being similar.

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#93

Post by pezezin »

trealira wrote: post #36
kagevf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know IPA, but Japanese e and Spanish e are also different. Spanish e is like English A in "ace", Japanese e is closer to English "eh".

That's the difference between [e] and [ɛ] in IPA (in IPA, with "narrow" phonetic transcription, you enclose the sounds in brackets). In American English, "ace" is [eɪs] and "mess" is [mɛs]. But I don't think that's right; I'm pretty sure both the Japanese e and Spanish e sound exactly the same. And if you pronounced [e] and [ɛ] to native speakers of either Spanish or Japanese, they most likely wouldn't be able to dif…

> And if you pronounced [e] and [ɛ] to native speakers of either Spanish or Japanese, they most likely wouldn't be able to differentiate the two sounds consistently without having had training.

I am a Spanish guy living in Japan, so I can confirm it. I didn't have any idea that the two sounds are supposed to be different because to me they sound exactly the same.

Fun fact: Japanese people are surprised that we have the same five vowels (although the U is a bit different), and that we can get the correct pronunciation very easily.

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#95

Post by Binginesic »

gfccggc wrote: post #78
aragonite wrote: post #41

Then there are real coincidences, like 'Muratori', which is both an Italian name [1] (Casey Muratori) and a real (though somewhat rare) Japanese name. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratori [2] https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=muratori+%E6%9D%91%E9%B3%A...

Quick IT lesson: Muro means wall Muratore means wall builder (-atore means doer) Muratori means wall builders (male plural )

[flagged]

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#96

Post by Anotheroneagain »

kagevf wrote: post #48
trealira wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the difference between [e] and [ɛ] in IPA (in IPA, with "narrow" phonetic transcription, you enclose the sounds in brackets). In American English, "ace" is [eɪs] and "mess" is [mɛs]. But I don't think that's right; I'm pretty sure both the Japanese e and Spanish e sound exactly the same. And if you pronounced [e] and [ɛ] to native speakers of either Spanish or Japanese, they most likely wouldn't be able to dif…

Japanese e would only ever be [ɛ]. The constructs to produce an [e] sound would be transliterated as "ei" (the quoted are just letters, not meant to be IPA). So, while I disagree that they sound "exactly the same", I do agree that in most cases the differences between [e] and [ɛ] wouldn't be enough to cause confusion between speakers of either language.

Japanese vowels not only don't seem to be consistent across diferent mora, they actually seem to be some sort of combination of vowel + pitch.

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#97

Post by FoeNyx »

xelxebar wrote: post #55

There's also this tome, which lists thousands of cognates between latin and Japanese: https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA80581101 It's trying to make the claim that these are etymological connections, which is a bit sketchy, but the phonological similarities it has meticulously catalogued are surprisingly convincing!

There are a lot of obvious cognates between Japanese and Latin through recently borrowed English or Romance words, so I was wondering what was surprising about it.

But it seems the author is talking about traditional Japanese words, and looking for ties in words and idioms like ("kokoro" & "corculum"), ("koi" & "cupio"), ("ganbare" & "quam vale"), ("omedetō" & "omen datum").

Seems a bit farfetched to me, but I'm no expert.

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#98

Post by throwaway290 »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #89
marcus_holmes wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When learning German it was a revelation that languages could pronounce the same letters in the same way in every word, and therefore you could accurately predict the pronunciation of a word from the spelling. English does not do this; every word has its own pronunciation, only loosely related to how it is spelled. I think every native English speaker has had the experience of learning a word from reading it, and sub…

Yes, this is also part of the reason why spelling bees are a uniquely American thing - in most other languages it is trivial to predict pronounciation from spelling, so a competition makes no sense.

It's not possible to predict pronunciation from spelling in Russian and there are no spelling bees in russia

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#99

Post by eatonphil »

ronyeh wrote: post #74

Reminds me of when a Japanese town celebrated Obama becoming president. https://youtu.be/K3qEIzYLOwA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-obama-japan/japans-obama-... (Yes I know he’s not African.) But it’s fun that his surname can be easily pronounced in Japan and Hawaii (although it would probably be Opama).

This situation was referenced in the article. :)

Re: Japanese words and names sound African (2022)

#100

Post by thedailymail »

unscaled wrote: post #80
jameshart wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese does allow for word initial P in loan words, like Pokémon, so the sound isn’t impossible in Japanese. And pachinko is a Japanese word.

There are also many native Japanese onomatopoeiae using an initial p sound. Interestingly enough, if we're at Pokémon, Pikachu's name is influenced by the onomatopoeia /pikapika/ which means to shine, sparkle or flash. But if we look at the original pronounciation of the Japanese verb 光る/hikaru ("to shine"), it would have been pronounced /pikaru/ in Old Japanese, so it looks like the onomatopoeia has re-established i…

The Pikachu name is also partly derived from the pika, a small rabbit-like mammal native to Asia and North America.
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