Re: USAGE: More Japanese

On Sat, 5 Jul 2003 21:01:06 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

>On Sat, Jul 05, 2003 at 06:06:36PM -0400, Jeff Jones wrote:
>> Well, compared to some other threads, Mark, this is relatively on-topic!
>
>True enough. :)
>
>> Yes. It is (or was) limited to certain speakers, and mostly
>> non-initial /g/ IIRC.
>
>> Is there an [i] or [j] after it?
>
>Nope.
>
>Specifically, a transcription of the lyrics I found on the web gives the
>first line starting with "anoko na hutteita".  The singer seems to be
>realizing that as [AnokoNAp\Mt:eitA].   I hear it as
>[AnokonjApM?deitA], which makes sense auditory-artifactwise,
>other than the [N] as [nj].  Everywhere else in the same song,
>/g/ definitely sounds like [N] rather than [nj].
Japanese has a particle "nya" from "ni wa" as well as "na" and "ga", but I
don't know if it's appropriate here (or "na" for that matter, since it
seems to be followed by a verb form "hutte ita" was raining or snowing ?).
I should probably ask you about the age and gender of the singer -- that
seems to make a difference in spoken Japanese, not sure about songs, though.

>> >2. Does Japanese have [?] a an allophone of /t/?
>>
>> No. The end of a word in isolation, or the start of a word can sound like
>> [?] due to crisp enunciation, but that's all I know of.
>
>Okay.  I understand hearing geminate /t:/ as /?t/, /t?/, /?d/, /d?/,
>etc.  But the same "ottomo" in which I hear no [m] at all also seems to
>have [?:] for /t:/, nothing dental about it.
>
>> I've heard of [Mmi] becoming [M.i], but this is lexically limited IIRC.
>
>Interesting.
>
>> Weird! I don't think [kw] or [rj] or [4m] can occur in Japanese either.
>> What kind of recording is this?
>
>Anime soundtrack CD.
I expect Christophe will chime in eventually.

>> Is the singer native Japanese?
>
>Yes.
>
>> Also, I might as well ask how you know what's supposed to be there.
>
>Like I said above, lyric transcription found online.
>
>> Could [kwi] really be [kMi] and [rje] really [rie]?
>
>That was my guess before I looked up the lyrics.  I also guessed that the
>[irmM] was /irimM/ or /irumM/.
>
>> Close. [f] should be bilabial. The others are close enough, I think.
>
>Thanks!  As Garth said, the X-SAMPA for the bilabial is [p\].
>Another question: is Japanese /a/ generally [a] or [A]?
I'd say [a]. It seems to be more front than, say, Italian /a/. Definitely
not [A] judging by what I've heard.

Jeff

>
>-Mark

Replies