Tag: phonology

Japanonomatopoeia.

August 14, 2013 / Josh / 0 Comments

Sometimes I wonder if the Japanese language is has so much onomatopoeia because the phonological structure leads to it or whether their interest in onomatopoeia lead to phonological structures reminiscent of it. Here’s one of the most difficult words to say that I know in Japanese:

暖かくなかった (Kanji)
あたたかくなかった (Hiragana)
atatakakunakatta (Rōmaji)
/atatakɯnakatta/ (IPA)

This is an adjective meaning it wasn’t warm outside. Because of the length and the very regular CV syllable pattern, this is a tongue twister for me and sounds like onomatopoeia for attacking. Of course, my (incorrect) interpretation is clearly influenced by the English word attack having a similar phonological structure (/ətæk/), but this repetition fits words that are accepted as Japanese onomatopoeia as well:

じろじろ見る (Kanji)
じろじろみる (Hiragana)
jirojiromiru (Rōmaji)
/dʑiɾodʑiɾomiɾɯ/ (IPA)

This means to stare (or, more literally, to look staringly). Although I’m sure this word goes back further than the invention of lasers, that’s what I think of when I hear the initial sound: lasers coming out of someone’s eyes.

Regardless of whether the chicken or the egg won this battle, I’m glad the battle happened as it gives me something to write (and chuckle) about.

Are English R’s ridiculous?

July 6, 2013 / Josh / 0 Comments

La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, sung by an opera singer from Spain/Mexico:

Now sung by another opera singer from France:

They’re not singing in English, obviously, but what caught my attention was that Plácido Domingo uses alveolar trills (rolled R’s produced in the front of the mouth) while Roberto Alagna uses uvular trills (produced at the top of the throat, although he does use one alveolar trill around 2:17). Alveolar trills don’t really exist in French except for in older dialects of Quebec French, at least according to Wikipedia, but they do exist in Spanish. Nevertheless, I was more surprised by Alagna’s pronunciation as I’ve heard plenty of native French speakers use the alveolar version in French opera.

This happens in English opera quite a bit, too. Check out this clip from Britten’s Gloriana, particularly around 1:45:

Aveolar trills abound (as well as some unnatural sounding vowels such as in good when they sing “good countess”). These definitely do not exist in any dialect of English and yet these singers are all native English speakers. What’s the deal? Apparently English R’s are ugly and lack clarity. A quick web search will pull up this claim repeated ad infinitum but I’ve yet to find anyone state exactly who decided on this. Afterall, I personally find trills in English singing to sound silly and to completely ruin clarity (I recently watched that Britten opera and had to use subtitles).

I e-mailed a well known phonetician about this as I knew that he also sang in a choir of some sort and he responded that this is a holdover from Italian teachers. This makes sense. Opera is really an Italian form and alveolar trills definitely exist in Italian. Even the vowel shifts make sense with this explanation. Good in the Britten clip sounds like [u] to me, like a Spanish U, which I believe is the same as an Italian U, whereas it should be [ʊ] in most dialects of English.

I’m not too sure why singers have just taken these claims for granted for generations, though. This suggests that basically all music sung in English other than opera sounds terrible to them. Maybe it does. I can name more than one classical music fan that’s pretty elitist in their attitude towards other genres. Maybe it also has something to do with the potential for people to accept authority with little question. Coincidentally, I was recently doing some ethics certifications for human subject research and the Milgram obedience experiment came up:

Mothers’ mother’s Mothers Day.

May 3, 2013 / Josh / 0 Comments

I’m pretty sure the title of this post could be paraphrased as the Mother’s Day of all the mothers that belong to all the mothers out there.

A friend of mine just mentioned Mother’s Day to me through text and I had to pause when writing back because it seemed that any version of mothers/mother’s/mothers’ would make sense when talking about the holiday. This is a topic that John Wells has blogged about at least a few times. He likes to go on tirades against apostrophes, and I think for good reason. They’re often unnecessary when context will due and the phonetic realization of each version is the same. If we can handle this in speech, why not in writing?

Maybe because no one is likely to understand a title like Mothers’ mother’s Mothers Day in speech. If someone actually uttered this phrase, I’m sure their listeners would need to ask for some clarification. In this case, the orthography actually has the option to disambiguate without any clarifying questions. So what if we end up writing things “wrong” because of confusion over apostrophes and polysemy: a purpose is still served.

This reminds me of the debates over Japanese writing that I’ve blogged about before.