Re: uh?

Bart Mathias wrote:

The Wanderer wrote:

Since I'd have said, before tonight, that anyone who claimed that
there were more than (to be generous) about eight Japanese vowel
sounds in total didn't know what they were talking about, I don't
know if I can claim much snootiness over that one.


It depends how you define "sound."  If you mean it as what
distinguishes one word from another, then "standard" Japanese has
exactly five vowels. (Some dialects might have fewer; at least one I
know has more.)


I would be *very* interested, on at least an academic level, to learn
more about that. (My inner etymologist sat up and took notice at the
very mention of the idea that there might be variations on such a basic
level.)

As to the definition of "sound", I think I can safely borrow one of the
definitions I've derived from considering the tree-in-a-forest question:
"something a person would recognize as being a sound", or in this case,
"something a person would recognize as being a distinct sound". If the
difference can be heard - not simply "detected" as with a 'sound
spectrograph' (and I *know* there's a technical term for that) - then
I'd probably classify the sounds as being different.

(Only "probably", mind, because then one gets into things like the
differences between people's voices and the differences involved in
inflection and/or intonation and even, perhaps, the differences in
volume... and many or most of those would not be enough to constitute a
difference in the sense at hand.)

If you mean allophones, it's somewhere between, but I think I
generally made it about a dozen or so (distinguishing the four-way
distinction of /u/ in /kuki/, /muki/, /suki/ and /sumu/, for example)
in presentations to students, only five of which are really necessary
to distinguish unless you want to pass as Japanese for the CIA or
something.


....except perhaps for the elided 'u' in 'suki', I'm not sure I'd noticed
any differences in the 'u's among those. I really have far too little
practical experience with Japanese to go very deep into this sort of
discussion...

But yes, I'd consider a dozen or so to be reasonable, given what little
I've seen of the idea so far.

--
      The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
.

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