Talk:Japanese/Pronunciation
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[edit] Isolated consonant?
The lead and a later section mention there is one isolated consonant? What does that mean? It can't mean that all other consonants are always found with another one, but that is what it seems to imply. Some additional explanation on that would be very good. Also since that is under the heading moraic nasal it is a little hard to find for someone reading the article and not knowing what an isolated consonant is. I don't have a great solution for that. Anyway, great job on the module, it's quite nice. I do agree some sounds would be fantastic as well. - Taxman (talk) 17:08, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks a lot for the comment, Taxman. The isolated consonant is the "n" and it is said to be isolated because all the other consonants must be followed by a vowel. I agree that this isn't terribly clear in the text. I'll try to give it some thought and fix it if no-one beats me to it. --Swift (talk) 19:14, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
- Excellent. The explanation you just gave makes a lot of sense, so that would be a big improvement. You could always worry about something even better later. - Taxman (talk) 04:37, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
- Great. Could you possibly have a look at the changes I made and tell me if this is clear enough? Thanks. --Swift (talk) 05:34, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
- Excellent. The explanation you just gave makes a lot of sense, so that would be a big improvement. You could always worry about something even better later. - Taxman (talk) 04:37, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Voicing of H is B?
I'm posting this in two places. The other was on the talk page for Japanese Phonology on Wikipedia, but because of the very high traffic levels, it might possibly go unnoticed there. It's also faster to get more answers by asking in more places anyway.
Adding dakuten is supposed to change voicing only; movement of the teeth, toungue, and lips stay the same (or so I've learned). This works perfectly fine for K->G, S->Z, T->D (し,ち have different pronunciations, yet じ/ぢ are pronounced the same. Same with す,つ->ず/づ. ち->ぢ and す->ず are fine. I know づ was once 'dzu', but that seems to have gotten lost. Not sure on じ. The tongue doesn't touch the roof of the mouth when pronouncing 'shi' but it does for 'chi' and 'ji'.), and even W->V in katakana (assuming V is pronounced V and not B. [Interestingly, unicode characters exist for ヷ, ヸ, ヹ, and ヺ, though they don't really display properly]). Then there's H->B/P. Lips don't touch together when pronouncing H, but they do when pronouncing B/P. Comparing with the remaining unvoiced consonants N, M, Y, and R, M is the one that has the same mouth movements as B/P.
Another thing is the different pronunciations of ん. ex: /n/ before T/D/N, /ŋ/ before K/G, /m/ before M/B/P. D is voiced T, G is voiced K, but B isn't voiced M, which it might seem to be.
Wouldn't it make more sense for dakuten on M to produce B instead? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 150.210.226.38 (talk • contribs) 17:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
- First off, this talk page is for the discussion of its respective module. Secondly, I'm not sure what exactly you're asking.
- Finally, while very regular, the sounds and voiced forms aren't completely regular. じ and ぢ, and ず and づ are pronounced the same, respectively, but ぢ and づ are rarely seen. In some cases the old づ is now written ず (E.g. the old way of writing 出雲 phonetically is いづも, but this is rarely seen). --Swift (talk) 01:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
