Re: Another pronounciation question - hotaru ga ike

Paul D wrote:
On 2006-12-02 06:12:55 +0900, "John R. Yamamoto-Wilson"
<john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

[...]; my ear does generally tend to
register high pitch as carrying a stronger stress, and I do sometimes
have difficulty hearing pitch properly.



I think this is common (and a problem) for native English speakers; our
own language tends to pronounce stressed syllables at a higher pitch, so
we hear non-existent stress depending on the pitch pattern of Japanese
words.

The general rule for Japanese pitch, if I recall correctly, is that one
key syllable in a word carries the accent*; and every syllable from the
second one up till that one is "high", and after that is "low". This
means that the pitch pattern of a word can change if it's turned into a
compound word, because the second word can "pull up" the syllables of
the first.

Example: I live near an intersection called Oshikiri. The "shi" seems to
be the "key" syllable, so the stress pattern is LHLL. However, the
nearby bus stop is called Oshikirichou. The "cho" in the added bit takes
over as the key syllable, resulting in a new pattern: LHHHHL.

To my ears, at least. :)

It seems to me that (depending on where in Japan that is--I'm thinking
Kantou) it should be LHHHLL. I believe "-chou" is one of the
geographical suffixes like "-shi," "-ken," "-wan," etc., that induce an
accent on the syllable (not necessarily mora) that precedes them in
"standard" Japanese.

* I'm ignoring the case where there is no accented syllable, such that
the whole word from the second syllable onward is high, including the
particle that follows.

I don't think I've ever thought of calling those "post-accented" words;
I wonder how well it would work. It would probably cause a problem with
"-kara"--"soko-kara-wa" would come out LHHLL instead of LHHHL.

Probably takes a bit of senility to even briefly think of such a thing.

Bart
.

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