Re: Phoneme winnowing continues

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> One is two phones, the other three. Tell me, you can make the difference
> between a long vowel and a sequence of two identical short vowels can't
> you? Especially since it's important in Japanese, which does distinguish
> between the two (I don't know any minimal pairs, but I wouldn't be
> surprised to find them)
Suuri, [su:ri] "mathematical principle" (from suu + ri), suuri [suuri],
"vinegar vendor", satouya [sato:ja] "sugar seller" (from satou + ya),
satooya [satooja] "foster parent" (from sato + oya)

> It doesn't become the onset of the following syllable, even
> phonetically. "ten'ou" ("emperor", IIRC) [ten.o:], doesn't at all sound
> like "tenou" [te.no:] in Japanese.
Emperor is actually Tennou, an irregular derivation, since it's from ten
+ ou.

However, Ten'ou is used in the name Ten'ousei, which is the Japanese
name for the planet Uranus.

> Three morae indeed. And they are considered as such, I've heard enough
> Japanese songs to be convinced of that fact. Indeed, even in slow
> movements, a word like "makka" takes three beats, not two (the actual
> pronunciation makes it actually quasi-identical to "maaka".
In songs, it often *is* identical.

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