Word-timing for English loanwords in Japanese
Background
Every language has a timing system that dictates the rhythm of the words in the language.
These timing systems are crucial for how words are pronounced, and incorrectly timing a word
when learning a language can cause confusion for the listener. There are three different types of
timings in languages: syllable-timing, stress-timing, and mora-timing. Syllable timing is when the
duration of each syllable is uniform. Stress-timing is when the stressed syllables of a word are
drawn out more, and the other syllables are shorter. Lastly, mora-timing introduces the unit of
timing called the mora, which can be equal to or shorter than the length of a syllable. Syllables
can be monomoraic (one mora), bimoraic (two morae), or trimoraic (three morae). Japanese is
an example of a mora-timed language.
Japanese words can be written in terms of basic phonological units/characters, an alphabet
known as kana. Kana is broken into hiragana, used for most Japanese words, and katakana,
used primarily for foreign words and onomatopoeia. Each character represents a sound, which
can either be a vowel or a consonant-vowel cluster. A chart containing both hiragana and
katakana characters can be seen below. Syllables can be one or two characters long,
composed of a single vowel (eg. お or ‘o’), a consonant-vowel cluster (eg. と or ‘to’), or a
consonant-vowel-vowel cluster (eg. とう or ‘to-u’). In Japanese words, it has been determined
that both single vowel syllables and consonant-vowel syllables are assigned one mora, while a
consonant-vowel-vowel syllable is assigned two morae.
Japanese adopts many foreign words, known as loan words, into their language, as many
languages do. However, the conversion of words from languages that use the Roman
alphabet—such as English—to Japanese can be complicated. English loanwords in Japanese
can undergo syllable expansion and phonological changes. There are multiple reasons for these
changes in pronunciation: lone consonants or consonant cluster sounds can not be produced
without a vowel sound after each consonant (other than the consonant ‘n’), English has a
greater abundance of vowel sounds than Japanese’s five vowel sounds, and some consonant
sounds cannot be distinguished (like ‘R’ and ‘L’) or produced (fricative ‘v’ turns into plosive ‘b’) in
Japanese. A few examples of loanword conversion to Japanese can be seen in the table below.
The words are written in the international phonetic alphabet.
Word in English
Process used
Word after conversion
krim
Syllable Expansion
kurīmu
steɪk
Syllable Expansion
sutēku
bʌs
Phonological Change
basu
wɜrk
Phonological Change
wāku
baɪk
Phonological Change
baiku
In the rightmost column, the bar notation above a vowel indicates a long vowel sound; in
Japanese, this signifies that the associated syllable will have two morae, while syllables with no
long vowel only have one mora. My research will be conducted for the purpose of identifying a
pattern/rule—if there is one—for how a number of mora is assigned to an originally
syllable-timed English word. It will seek to answer the questions:
● How does the Japanese language adopt syllable-timed loanwords?
● In what ways do omitted, changed, and added vowel/consonant sounds affect the timing
of an English loanword in Japanese?
This information will be useful for predicting how new English loanwords will be adapted to
Japanese; furthermore, it could help English speakers who are learning Japanese by giving
them a pattern for how words in English will be timed in Japanese.
I have multiple independent hypotheses regarding different situations in which the timing of a
syllable is lengthened for an English loanword:
1. Syllables created by adding a vowel after a consonant will always have only one mora.
2. Long vowels are used when there is a vowel cluster in the English word that is replaced
with one vowel in Japanese (‘ea’ in ‘cream’ to ‘ ī ’ in ‘kurīmɯ’).
3. An extra mora is added to the vowel sound before an omitted consonant sound (‘work’
→ ‘wākū’; ‘r’ omitted so the preceding vowel is lengthened).
4. If a vowel sound can be replicated by two Japanese vowels, then this syllable will have
two morae (‘i’ in ‘bike’ to ‘ai’ in ‘baiku’).
Research Data
In order to prove or disprove my hypotheses, I will collect data for each specific situation. In
order to do so, more pronunciations/conversions of English-like words by Japanese speakers
need to be collected. For the purpose of this, I have fabricated a number of words by taking
English loanwords and changing the letters that are predicted not to affect the number of morae;
each word relates to one hypothesis only. I did this in order to attempt to make the word
unrecognizable from other loanwords in Japanese. Furthermore, I have predicted an outcome
for each word, based on the rules I have hypothesized above, as well as a mora count for each
syllable.
Hypothesis 1:
Hypothesis 3:
Hypothesis 2:
Hypothesis 4:
Methods
In order to collect the data required to confirm or refute my hypotheses, I will recruit forty
native-Japanese speakers who are 20-30 years old and proficient in English. Throughout the
data collection period of the experiment, the speakers will be isolated in a room with a
microphone and computer monitor. The monitor will be for the purpose of displaying the
word/syllable to be said, and the microphone will record their responses.
In order to establish a baseline for the length of one mora, the speakers will be asked to say a
series of normal Japanese consonant-vowel clusters, which are guaranteed to be monomoraic
syllables, at a conversational speed. The syllables will be recorded and the average time for
each syllable to be said will be saved as the baseline mora for each specific speaker. It is best
not to generalize or average the length of a mora over every speakers’ recordings, because
each speaker can have different conversational speeds. So, the baseline mora for each speaker
will be treated as unique and stored for later use.
Each speaker will then be tasked with saying the words in the leftmost columns of the tables
above. They will be instructed to say them as they would in Japanese, at the same
conversational speed as earlier. Each recorded word will be broken into syllables and the time
for each syllable will be measured. Based on the baseline mora time for each speaker that was
found earlier, we will be able to identify the number of morae in each syllable. Lastly, the
observed mora count for each word will be written in the same format as the rightmost column in
the tables above (eg. x-y-z).
Predictions and Significance
If the mora count for a word is consistent enough to say the pattern is not just due to
coincidence, it can be compared to the predicted mora count in the tables above. For a
hypothesis, if the observed and predicted mora count for each word in the table are the same,
this strongly indicates the validity of that hypothesis. If all of these conditions do not hold, then
that hypothesis is likely not valid and may have to be reassessed. This process will be repeated
for all 4 hypotheses.
If any of the hypotheses are correct, it means that there are indeed observable patterns for
determining the number of mora in loanwords in Japanese. This could be incredibly useful for
English speakers who wish to further understand how the Japanese language adopts English
words into their lexicon. Furthermore it may help communication between English and Japanese
speakers when neither speaker is proficient in the others’ language. Being able to say a word in
a way that the other speaker could recognize and understand in terms of their own language is
important for breaking the language barrier.
Limits of Conclusions; Future Research
In the case that my hypotheses are consistent with the data collected, it should be known that
there are still limitations to the conclusions that may be drawn. While the rules stated in the
hypotheses may be correct for English words that are not altered any further past once
converted for Japanese use, there is a different subset of loanwords that has not been
discussed in this paper. This subset may contradict the conclusions of this research by following
different rules entirely.
While shorter loanwords, like those discussed above, are converted and left untouched, longer
words will often undergo another process, known as ‘mora-clipping’. This is when an English
loanword in Japanese is shortened from its converted form (millimeter → mirimitoru → miri).
Furthermore, there are a variety of types of mora-clipping: fore-clipping, mid-clipping, and
back-clipping. In many cases, this can make it difficult to interpolate the original word from the
shortened word.
The purpose of introducing this subset of English loanwords is to acknowledge that the
conclusions of this research are limited to words that are not clipped. The rules for which morae
of a word are clipped and if these words follow the same rules for mora assignment as
unclipped words are unknown. Investigating these ideas is cause for future research, as
knowing this information could strengthen the conclusions and significance of the research
proposed in this paper. Furthermore, understanding why mora clipping occurs could lead to
insight about Japanese culture and language as a whole, as it could potentially reveal
underlying cultural norms about the accepted length of a word.
Generalization of Conclusions
The conclusions from the research proposed in this paper could likely be generalized to
loanwords from other languages to Japanese. However, it would first have to be determined
how similar the language is to English. Many western languages operate with the Roman
alphabet and have similar phonetic characteristics, so these languages are good candidates for
potential generalization.
To find the languages whose loanwords follow the rules that we were able to conclude, one
could simply compile the loanwords from many languages in Japanese and reference them with
the English loanwords. If the results are similar enough, we could sufficiently justify the
generalization of the conclusions made from the research above. Being able to make this
inference could potentially broaden the benefits/significance of the conclusions and could save
time, effort, and resources that might have been spent conducting more studies relating to
loanwords in the said languages.