Re: CHAT: Blandness (was: Uusisuom's influences)

On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> > Er...where can I find a definition of "syllable-timed" rhythm?
>
> A language wherein every syllable is pronounced with the same length, as
> opposed to stress-timed, like most dialects of English, wherein there is
> a roughly equal time between *stressed* syllables (Carribean English is
> syllable-timed, which contributes to its rather distinct, and, IMO,
> beautiful, rhythm).  Japanese is a mora-timed language.
Ah!  What other kinds of -timed are there?

> That's another beautiful language.  I've been watching Sailor Moon
> subtitled lately, and sometimes I like to just have it on without
> watching, just to listen to the Japanese.  :-)  Of course, it's also
> really fun to hear them throw in random bits of English "No
> puraburemu!", and, of course, their attacks.  :-)
<laugh>  I haven't seen Sailor Moon, but yes, I know what you mean.  Once
I got past the first year of watching anime when I was *only* paying
attention to the subtitles, I discovered that I liked the sound of spoken
Japanese quite a lot.

> > How have other people handled stress/accent?
>
> Uatakassí uses a Japanese-inspired pitch-accent system.  The rules are:
> 1.  Make all syllables low
> 2.  Make the stressed syllable high
> 3.  If the stressed syllable is non-initial, make all following
> syllables high
> 4.  If the following word is initially-stressed, and the final syllable
> of the current word is high, make it falling.
>
> So:
> kifísnai (they - gender 5) =              kifísnái (í = high pitch)
> kísna (it - gender 5) =                   kísna
> Bannássatu kísna (it.G5 begins to walk) = bannássátù kísna (ù = falling)
>
> So, the pitches automatically determine word-boundaries
Neat.  :-)

YHL

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