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Sound Changes of Japanese Borrowings from English
Courtesy of David J. Peterson
-[p] gets borrowed as /p/
-[b] gets borrowed as /b/
-[m] gets borrowed as /m/
-[f] gets borrowed as /f/ (that is, a bilabial voiceless fricative. Though in Japanese you only get this fricative before /u/, that sound has been taken and put into every environment it's found in in borrowed words. So "photo" is /foto/, not /hoto/)
-[v] gets borrowed as /b/ (intervocalically, of course, this is a voiced bilabial fricative)
-[T]/[D], don't know (/t/ and /d/ or /s/ and /z/?)
-[t] gets borrowed as /t/ word-initially, word-finally or in clusters; gets borrowed as /r/ when flapped
-[d] same as above, but with /d/ in place of /t/
-[n] gets borrowed as /n/
-[s] gets borrowed as /s/ (and I've heard even as /s/ before [i], but that may be conjecture)
-[z] gets borrowed as /z/ or /Z/ (haven't heard the above about /z/)
-[l] gets borrowed as /r/
-[r] gets borrowed as /r/ in onset position
-[S] gets borrowed as /S/ (even before /e/)
-[Z] gets borrowed as /Z/ (even before /e/)
-[tS] gets borrowed as /tS/ (even before /e/)
-[dZ] gets borrowed as /dZ/ (even before /e/)
-[j] gets borrowed as /j/
-[k] gets borrowed as /k/ or /kj/
-[g] gets borrowed as /g/ or /gj/
-[w] don't know (it's no so much a phoneme anymore, is it?)
-[h] gets borrowed as /h/ (but it still becomes a bilabial fricative before /u/)
-[@] gets borrowed as /a/ (or /i/--see below)
-[I] gets borrowed as /i/ (or /a/--see below)
-[U] gets borrowed as /u/
-[u] gets borrowed as /u/
-[e] gets borrowed as /e/ or /ee/
-[E] gets borrowed as /e/
-[i] gets borrowed as /i/ or /ii/
-[A] gets borrowed as /a/
-[o] gets borrowed as /o/ or /oo/
-[&] gets borrowed as /e/ or /a/
-[Ar] gets borrowed as /aa/
-[Er] gets borrowed as /er/
-[ir] gets borrowed as /ir/
-[Or] gets borrowed as /or/ (maybe /oo/?)
-Diphthongs get borrowed as single vowels followed by the off-glide vowel
[The above is mainly to jog my memory.]
Notes:
1.) Many reduced vowels can either be [I] or [@]. It's a toss-up how it will be realized in a word, more often than not, so it can vary whether a reduced vowel will be borrowed as /i/ or /a/.
2.) I think it's a toss-up between /e/ and /ee/ (also /o/ and /oo/) for [ej] and [ow]. So I know that "animation" was borrowed as /animeesyon/, but I don't know about "gate" or "boat". Would it be /geeto/ or /geto/; /booto/ or /boto/?
3.) Though you have /apaato/ for "apartment", and I can only assume /kaa/ for "car", you do get /peru/ for "pair" and /biru/ for "beer". I don't know about if "poor" were to be borrowed. I could see either /poo/ or /poru/.
4.) I said /e/ for [&], but every word I can think of has /a/: /animeesyon/, /animaasitii/, /bandu/, etc.
5.) Final /-y/ or /-ey/ or /-ie/ is always interpreted as /ii/, even if it makes for unbalanced words, as in /animaasitii/.
6.) The final vowel confuses me. In words ending in a consonant, I've seen /i/, /u/ and /o/ as a final vowel.
7.) In onset clusters, /u/ is usually the vowel inserted, so "strike" is /sutoraiki/ (note: There is an /o/ here. Maybe there's a "no two epenthetic /u/'s in a row" rule...?)
8.) A lot of the time, the whole word isn't borrowed. Most commonly, the result is a disyllabic word that either has two light syllables, or a heavy followed by a light.
9.) Japanese also has geminates, and these are used in surprising ways.
I don't understand your transcription system... How does it relate to Japanese?
I found a site with a couple:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/afaq/gairaigo-kanjis.html
I guess "beer" does have a long vowel /biiru/, and though "coffee" is listed as /koohii/, I'm pretty sure it's pronounced /koofii/.
Oh, did you look at this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gairaigo
As a comment, I don't think there's one list of rules. There are some conventions, but say if you have "grass" and "glass", you can bend the rules to get two unique Japanese words. I think I should try to find all the lists of words that I can; maybe that would be more helpful than me trying to remember words.
-David
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