Mark J. Reed wrote:
> One last plea for Nihongo help, then I'll return to conlanging
> topics.
>
> I'm trying to transcribe a couple Japanese songs. Let me say
> that I definitely hear /4/ as [l] in some contexts, especially
> phrase-initial. But there are other places where I'm not hearing
> what I should be hearing, so I have some questions.
>
> 1. It appears that [N] is an allophone of /g/. Correct? That's
> reasonable enough, but for some reason one of the [N]s sounds like [nj]
> to me, which is of course a different phoneme altogether.
I think the allophone of /g/ is a prenasalized /g/. /N/ is an allophone
of /n=/.
> 2. Does Japanese have [?] a an allophone of /t/? Or is it more likely to be
> just a case of "all stops sound alike in a recording"?
Dunno. Is it mostly happening with geminate stops? /t:/ can be realized
as [?t], I think.
> 3. At one point an intervocalic /m/ seems to disappear completely. There's
> just no trace of it; the word "omotte" /omot:e/ sounds like [o:?e].
> Any idea what happened there?
Maybe it's just the recording? Sometimes phonemes are harder to identify
when sung.
> 4. The converse keeps happening, too; I keep hearing extra sounds that
> aren't supposed to be there. At various points in the
> two songs I have, I hear "iru" /i4M/ as [i4mM]; "kotare" /kotAre/ as
> [kotArje]; and "ki" /ki/ as [kwi]. Except for the [rje], which sounds
> like a palatized syllable, the extra sounds obviously don't fit the
> Japanese syllable rules, so they aren't a problem, but it seems odd
> that they're there.
No idea what's going on there.
> Finally, I would like to make sure I understand all the phonetic changes.
> These are the ones I know about; am I missing any?
>
> 1. /hu/ is pronounced [fu]
Actually, [p\u].
> 2. /si/ is pronounced [Si] (/sj/ is [S])
I'd say there is no /si/, just /sa/ /su/ /se/ /so/ and /Sa/ /Si/ /Su/
/So/. At least in native words. Maybe you could say the /s/-/S/
distinction is neutralized before /i/.
> 3. /ti/ is pronounced [tSi (/tj/ is [tS])
Again, I'd say there isn't a /ti/ in native words. (It occasionally
appears in loanwords, where it's written with the katakana <te> followed
by a small subscript katakana <i>)
> 4. /tu/ is pronounced [tsu]
True.
> 5. /zi/ is pronounced [dZi] (/zj/ is [dZ])
See #2.