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Nit: pokatokaino is unlikely to be Japanese, since word-initial p has morphed into h during the centuries. But it works if you turn it into, say, t. Anyway, I
by shiomiru 2y ago
Nit: pokatokaino is unlikely to be Japanese, since word-initial p has morphed into h during the centuries. But it works if you turn it into, say, t.
Anyway, I think there's another factor: the common alphabet we transliterate these languages to is quite limited. I suspect the similarities become less obvious if you use something like the IPA, which has better universal correspondence between sounds and letters (i.e. doesn't reduce every sound to the same ~26 symbols).
- fjdjshsh 2y agoThat's a good point. Latin letters map to a big number of IPA sounds. I think this is specially true with consonants. Vowels, however, might be the same. For example, Spanish has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u in IPA). Japanese also has five IPA vowels and only the "u" is different in IPA
- kagevf 2y agoI don't know IPA, but Japanese e and Spanish e are also different. Spanish e is like English A in "ace", Japanese e is closer to English "eh".
- trealira 2y agoThat's the difference between [e] and [ɛ] in IPA (in IPA, with "narrow" phonetic transcription, you enclose the sounds in brackets). In American English, "ace" is [eɪs] and "mess" is [mɛs]. But I don't think that's right; I'm pretty sure both the Japanese e and Spanish e sound exactly the same. And if you pronounced [e] and [ɛ] to native speakers of either Spanish or Japanese, they most likely wouldn't be able to differentiate the two sounds consistently without having had training. I know that in Spanish, realization of e can be either vowel depending on the speaker and context; they might pronounce "tierra" as [tjɛra] and "mesa" as [mesa].
- kagevf 2y agoJapanese e would only ever be [ɛ]. The constructs to produce an [e] sound would be transliterated as "ei" (the quoted are just letters, not meant to be IPA). So, while I disagree that they sound "exactly the same", I do agree that in most cases the differences between [e] and [ɛ] wouldn't be enough to cause confusion between speakers of either language.
- fjdjshsh 2y ago>Japanese e would only ever be [ɛ] What's your source for this? Wikipedia says "/e, o/ are mid [e̞, o̞]" [1] >The mid front unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound that is used in some spoken languages. There is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the exact mid front unrounded vowel between close-mid [e] and open-mid [ɛ], but it is normally written ⟨e⟩. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology?wprov=sfla1
- Anotheroneagain 2y agoJapanese vowels not only don't seem to be consistent across diferent mora, they actually seem to be some sort of combination of vowel + pitch.
- poincaredisk 2y ago>they most likely wouldn't be able to differentiate the two sounds consistently without having had training I learn English since I was pretty young, I believe I'm quite fluent (I mostly use English for work, I lived for two years in an English speaking country, I read books in English, etc), and I still have problems distinguishing some English vowels. I think sound acquisition is one of the hardest things to learn for a non-native speaker.
- pezezin 2y ago> And if you pronounced [e] and [ɛ] to native speakers of either Spanish or Japanese, they most likely wouldn't be able to differentiate the two sounds consistently without having had training. I am a Spanish guy living in Japan, so I can confirm it. I didn't have any idea that the two sounds are supposed to be different because to me they sound exactly the same. Fun fact: Japanese people are surprised that we have the same five vowels (although the U is a bit different), and that we can get the correct pronunciation very easily.
- semi-extrinsic 2y agoAs a speaker of Scandinavian languages, literally none of the vowels in English map correctly to how we pronounce the same vowels. Several of the English vowels are diphthongs, which we spell out with double vowels. Like eng. "i" is our "ai", eng. "a" is our "ei" - "a bridge" is translated to "ei bro", where the articles are pronounced exactly the same. Or the Scottish word for home, "hame", is pronounced exactly like we say the same word, "heim".
- kergonath 2y agoEnglish vowels are weird compared to most continental European languages, to be fair.
- jagrsw 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y agoI'm a native Greek speaker and to my ears all European languages' vowels are weird with the exception of Spanish, which is completely normal. All those airy sounds: caaat dooog, haaaaouse, taaaaime, etc like a little fish trying to eat a much bigger fish. Let me not start with French, or Italian. Conversely, when I hear myself or another Greek speaker speak English it's like there's a little guillotine in the back of the neck that snaps shut just when a vowel is starting to form: c't, d'g, ta'm, etc.
- meowface 2y agoTo add to the confusion, in English people might pronounce the article "a" as "ei" (like when reciting "ABC") or "uh" (like the start of "under"). I think most Americans do the latter. I do, at least.
- RajT88 2y agoScotland and Ireland were known to recieve social visits from scandinavians. So there could be a reason behind that.
- jameshart 2y agoJapanese does allow for word initial P in loan words, like Pokémon, so the sound isn’t impossible in Japanese. And pachinko is a Japanese word.
- shiomiru 2y agoFair; though I didn't say it's impossible, just unlikely :) Japanese words starting with "p" still exist, but they tend to be loanwords (pokemon = pocket + monster) or onomatopoeia (pachinko = pachin + ko). Thinking of it now, pokapoka is also a word, but again, an onomatopoeia.
- thih9 2y agoI thought of Pocky, but turns out this is an onomatopoeia too > It was named after the Japanese onomatopoeic word pokkiri (ポッキリ), which is supposed to resemble the sound of the snack being cracked. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocky https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocky
- latentsea 2y agoWhat about パクリ? and ぽっかり?
- naniwaduni 2y agoThose belong to the "onomatopoeic" stratum; you can form e.g. ぱくり・ぱっくり・ぱくぱく・ぱくっと.
- wwilim 2y agoPoka-yoke
- ekianjo 2y agothose are imported words.
- arghwhat 2y agoTo be fair, Pokémon is abbreviated English, while pachinko is recent from pachin, the onomatopoeia of the loud sound made by the metal balls. I believe the change into “h” sounds is more applied to words that were traditionally initiated in “p” but morphed over time, in turn also making words starting on “p” an oddity.
- ithkuil 2y agoThere are other subtle rules that language may follow in word formation. For example, in Japanese, a word like tokatokaino may mutate into tokadokaino due to a phonological effect called Rendaku (it depends on details like if "tokadokaino" is a compound word made of "toka"+"toka"+"ino")
- dotancohen 2y agoIs this the reason that we call Toyoda's company by the name Toyota?
- Macha 2y agoSo Toyota has a company folklore explanation to do with the number of strokes when written in hiragana being a lucky number, but Japanese linguists were skeptical when the BBC did a piece on it and think it was just a preference for the unvoiced version when the town in which it was founded changed its name to match the company: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8534294.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8534294.stm