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12-01-2010, 01:30 AM
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For starters, "46 syllables" might be misleading. I think the technical term for sound units in Japanese is "moras". I think this distinction is important because some of the characters shouldn't always be said as a complete "syllable" in all cases to create natural sounding speech. I'll go on to explain "dipththongs" in a second which will also give an example of why this is important. Also, there might be 46 characters on each chart (of katakana and hiragana), but slight altercations makes the sounds of some of them change drastically. You have tenten's and maru's to deal with, which adds 25 more characters to hiragana and even more to katakana. Also, all kanji can be converted to hiragana or katakana. Hiragana and Katakana provide a general example on how to say certain words. Moving on to vowel sounds, there are things called "dipththongs". That would entail, for example, an "ah" sound mixed with an "eeee" sound to make a sound like "eye". An "ehh" sound mixed with an "eee" sound could make something close to "A". The list goes on, but my point is there are more than "5 vowels" in my opinion. This also reveals that Japanese characters aren't syllables because an あ+い wouldn't be "two" syllales in the English language-- but rather just one to make a sound like "eye" (approximately of course). As far as grammar being more simple than English or French... I really wouldn't know. English grammar comes natural to me as I am a native... I have certainly come to a slight conclusion that there are more patterns in Japanese speech than in English speech, but as foras which one is complex goes, I don't know (because I've never completely approached English as a learner of it). As far as "no singular or plural" goes, that is not always true. There are plenty of words to indicate plurality (like counters, which don't exist as ferquently in English) as well as some straight up plural forms of words. These are of course very few when compared to English. Moving on to the idea that there are no "male/female" words... that may be true. If you're talking about how like in Spanish they say "la phone" or whatever (indicating the phone is feminine) then you might be right. There are definitely speech patterns and words that indicate whether the speaker is male or female though-- much more so than English in my opinion. There is also speech that indicates age, status of the listener, status of the speaker, etc. In that sense I think it is pretty complex to think about all at once. Another thing, approaching the language as a Westerner might be difficult because the language is so tied in with the culture. European culture might be relatively easy for an American to pick up. Like-wise American culture might be easy for a European to pick up. For us to learn Japanese culture, however, it is probably more challenging. While I don't think it'd be smart to assume anything when approaching a foreign language, you could probably get away with doing more assuming when learning English as a European or learning a European language as an English spaeker than learning Japanese as a Westerner. I've heard people say that learning spoken Japanese is easier than learning to read or write... I think I would agree with that. I personally think that holds true for all languages though. That might just be exposing a deficiency on my part though! 
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12-01-2010, 02:52 AM
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The absence of a diphthong in the Japanese 「愛」 (あい) [ai] also differentiates it from its Chinese equivalent, "爱" (ài) [aɪ̯˥˩] This might be a better example.
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12-01-2010, 03:05 AM
I will argue with you that あい is not spoken as two distinct syllables. It is one syllable. My point was that while the sound may not gllllllllllieeeeede like so many vowels in the English language, but that they combine to create a vowel outside of the "5 vowels of Japanese" that people like to talk about.
I will also argue that while "ai" might not be a good example of one, dipththongs do exist in Japanese. I want to stress that I did not mean that "あい" is pronounced the same way as English's "eye", but that it is similar.
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12-01-2010, 03:32 AM
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愛 is a two-syllable word, period. It's counted as two in literature where syllable counts matter as in poetry AND it's pronounced as such in the daily lives of us native speakers.
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12-01-2010, 03:55 AM
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ああ*／(あい)／あう／あえ／あお いあ／いい*／いう／いえ／いお うあ／うい／うう*／うえ／うお えあ／えい*／えう／ええ*／えお おあ／おい／おう*／おえ／おお* (*These are usually just long vowels.) Hence, the 25 possible vowel pairs are not true diphthongs in any sense of the word. I suppose you could call some of them (the ones that are not long vowels) concatenated vowels 「二連母音」, but this is a mostly pointless distinction as there are for all practical purposes pairs of two monophthongs that happen to occur together. 'Concatenated vowel pairs' are generally recognized to be two separate syllables 「音節」, and an example can be seen here. Quote:
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12-01-2010, 07:00 AM
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Similarly, would you consider the word はい a two syllable word? I certainly wouldn't. With that said, if a combination like あい is a monophthong according to Decimus, then how could it possibly consist of two syllables? You guys are mixing up syllablse with moras, plain and simple. The dipththong thing can go either way in my opinion (I wouldn't say that あい is a dipththong thoguh). Three simple dipththongs in Japnaese や ゆ よ. Depending on how you say them, you can make them super dipththongy as well. Masageru, with all do respect please check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_(linguistics) Look at the Japanese portion of the article and what it says about haiku.
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12-01-2010, 08:02 AM
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I know what mora 「拍（はく）」 means. I took linguistics classes back in college. Note that the article I quoted used the word 「音節（おんせつ）」, which unambiguously refers to the word 'syllable'. Quote:
I had also provided a link to this article, and I do make an effort to at least glance at articles before linking them. 「や」、「ゆ」、「よ」 are morae that also happen to be monomoraic syllables. Youon 「拗音」, like 「ちょ」、「ちゃ」、「きゃ」 are digraphs (set of two symbols) that represent a single mora and are often also monomoraic syllables. All youon only have a single vowel, like [o] for 「ちょ」, and [a] for 「ちゃ」 and 「ちゃ」. Again, these are digraphs, and CANNOT BE diphthongs since they only have a single vowel. Diphthongs, again, by definition, are combinations of multiple vowels (that glide together), and VOWELS SIMPLY CANNOT COMBINE WITH CONSONANTS TO FORM DIPHTHONGS. Phonetics does not work that way. Phonetics also often separates consonants from vowels when analysing sounds. You are the one mixing up diphthongs with digraphs and who knows what else.
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12-01-2010, 09:00 AM
I'm not confusing diphthongs with digraphs. I know what 音節 is and what it means.
I realize that some people say outright that there are no diphthongs in Japanese. Some people will say that there are. I say that there are and I don't think I'm going to change my stance on that. ちゃ ちょ and ちゅ are in no way two syllables. (I'm not sure if that's what you were implying or not) With that logic, the word "choose" would be two syllables (unless you want to throw in one more for good measure because of the "silent e"). I would argue that when spoken normally they are not diphthongs as well. I think we agree on that. Let me get this straight- you are saying that the word 牛肉 is four or possibly five syllables? This is because the ぎゅ is 2 syllables by your logic... plus a syllable for the う then there are a syllable each for に and く, right? Here's how I see it: ぎゅう is one syllable... as is に and as is く (that makes three). ぎゅう also happens to have a diphthong in it in my opinion. It's similar to that which is in the words "cute" and "ambiguous", which are one and four syllables respectively. For another example, let's take a look at the words 病院 and 美容院. I say 病院 has 2 syllables and 美容院 has three syllables (don't worry, I'm not just counting the kanji). To pronounce 病院 with three syllables would give you 美容院, which is a completely different word with a completely different meaning. (I am implying that the extra syllable is added to びょう makes びよう). The same thing goes for 牛 and 義勇. 牛 being one syllable and 義勇 being two. Those meanings are also very different. Not only that, but the characters や ゆ and よ by themselves can be considered diphthongs in my opinion (depending on how they are spoken). In combination with certain kana (like the ones I explained above) make something that is definitely a diphthong as I understand it. As far as syllable stuff goes, to add syllables in the places I showed is to say a completely different word which can confuse things and distort the language. To be clear, that's why I brought this up to begin with. A lot of beginners don't make this distinction (I'm talking about native English speakers) even though extremely similar sounds exist in our native language. It's a simple mistake which can be avoided with a little explanation as far as I can tell.
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12-01-2010, 11:06 AM
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Quit misrepresenting my position. I thought I had waved this article under your nose often enough. (this is the third time.) Apparently I had not, as reading it would made it clear that I WOULD NOT regard 「ちゃ」 as having two syllables. Now note the International Phonetic Alphabet for the following: 「や」 : [ja] : One mora, One syllable, One consonant [j], ONE monophthong vowel [a], NO diphthongs. 「ゆ」 : [ju͍] : One mora, One syllable, One consonant [j], ONE monophthong vowel [u͍], NO diphthongs. 「よ」 : [jo] : One mora, One syllable, One consonant [j], ONE monophthong vowel [o], NO diphthongs. 「ちゃ」 : [t͡ɕa] : One mora, One syllable, ONE consonant [t͡ɕ], ONE monophthong vowel [a], NO diphthongs. 「りゅ」 : [ɽʲu͍] : One mora, One syllable, ONE consonant [ɽʲ] (The superscript ʲ indicates that the consonant is palatalised), ONE monophthong vowel [u͍], NO diphthongs. 「きょう」 : [kʲoː] : Two morae 「きょ」＋「う」, One syllable [kʲoː], One consonant [kʲ] (Note the palatalised consonant.), ONE monophthong vowel [oː] (the colon, ':', indicates a long vowel, and it's still a monophthong.), NO diphthongs. Note that all the examples only have ONE CONSONANT and ONE VOWEL. There is no room whatsoever for any vowel gliding to occur, as each example contains only a single vowel, and vowels CANNOT BE jumbled up together with consonants, so diphthongs CANNOT EXIST at all. Consonant clusters are also impossible since there is only ONE CONSONANT in each example. Now compare the above with the IPA symbols of the following: "Sign" (English, most dialects) [saɪ̯n] : Two consonants [s] and [n], Two vowels [a] and [ɪ], One diphthong [aɪ̯]. One syllable. Analysing morae is pointless in English since nobody knows what to do with unstressed syllables. "Insane" (English, most dialects) [ɪnˈseɪ̯n] : Three consonants [n], [s], and [n]. Three vowels [ɪ], [e], and [ɪ]. One monophthong [ɪ], and one diphthong [eɪ̯]. Two syllables, [ɪn] + [seɪ̯n], and the stress mark, <ˈ> indicates that [seɪ̯n] is stressed. "文" (Chinese) (wén) [u̯ən˧˥] : One consonant [n], Two vowels [u] and [ə], One diphthong [u̯ə], One syllable and One mora. <˥> indicates the syllable is in the second tone. (Distinguishing syllables and morae is pointless in Chinese as every character corresponds to one syllable and one mora.) "狗" (Chinese) (gǒu) [koʊ̯˨˩˦] : One consonant [k], Two vowels [o] and [ʊ̯], and One diphthong [oʊ̯]. <˨˩˦> indicates the third tone. See the difference?
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12-01-2010, 01:16 PM
Oh sorry I made a mistake... I was saying "Nothing is impossible" xD
Thank you for your translations! Quote:
_________________ Hehe this post is going to "Are there diphtongs in Japanese ?" xD Well, how that is good of to receive much informations about this language... I let you to continue, it's really interesting
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