Re: mora

Emily Zilch wrote at 2004-06-23 14:07:24 (-0700)
 > i have a linguistic-technical question: i learned that the plural
 > of mora is 'mora' - that it is a native japanese word - when i was
 > learning japanese. you could say 'moras' because that would be
 > normal english (though i'd be more likely, contrarian that i am, to
 > say meren or something similarly irregular - anyone know the cases
 > of earliest Middle English?).
 >
 > wikipedia indicates discussion as follows:
 >
 > "Mora is a unit of sound used in phonology that determines stress
 > in some languages. Like many technical linguistics terms, the exact
 > definition of mora (plura moras or morae) is debated. The term,
 > meaning "delay," comes from Latin."
 >
 > now i'm confused. i think this might be a mis-appropriation - what
 > might be termed a 'faux ami' or false cognate. can anyone
 > corroborate either the first use of MORA or the native japanese
 > meaning thereof?
 >

I don't believe "mora" is a native Japanese word, although
people learning Japanese often assume this (certainly I did).

Evidence for this:

 http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/モーラ

The _Japanese_ Wikipedia entry for mora a) spells the word in katakana,
and b) says it's from Latin.  (Note that in Japanese the first
syllable is long).

 http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/doc/mora.html

This page (in English and Japanese) offers "haku" （はく） as a
Japanese equivalent of "mora".

(My Japanese really isn't up to reading those pages, but I believe
that what I have said above is correct.)

I hope this encoding passes the listserv OK and can be read by all
interested parties.  There's really no avoiding it, as it's part of
the Wikipedia URL.

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