Standard US English Dialect?
Dennis Preston
preston at MSU.EDU
Sun Apr 13 08:09:54 UTC 2008
Current Tokyo practice doers not seem to match the "standard"
suggestions, in which initial /g is [g] and intervocalic /g/ is [N]
(the velar nasal, oft written "ng," but only one sound). The
important exceptions even in the standard duggestions are:
1) Compounds (e.g., Sekaiginko "World bank")
2) After prefixes (e.g., o [honorific prefix] + genki = "ogenki" (with [g])
3) The number 5 (go), no mater how it is combined, is always
pronounced with [g]
4) Reduplicative or onomatopoetic words (e.g., gara-gara "rattle") have [g]
But Hibiya (2005) shows that Tokyo speakers born between 1965 and 79
(for which we have a large spoken corpus) range from 30 to 95%
[g]-users in those positions where the "rule" would require [N].
dInIs
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>Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster: Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
>Subject: Re: Standard US English Dialect?
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>I what you're referring to is the nasalization of the second "g",
>which is listed in my standard Japanese accent dictionary. AFAIK, this
>is a part of NHK Japanese and may or may not be followed by Tokyoites.
>I'm not very familiar with Tokyo speech, though, so it might be that
>it's widespread there.
>
>Very good memory. Gogo means afternoon, with the first "go" being noon
>and the second being after. BB
>
>On Apr 12, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>>
>> I don't know what NHK Japanese sounds like, but the Tokyo dialect is
>> certainly different. E.g., the word usually transliterated "gogo" and
>> pronounced more-or-less as transliterated, is pronounced approximately
>> "gong-o" in the Tokyo dialect.
>>
>> I think that the word means "noon," but it was a while ago, the
>> 1968-69 school year, that I took Japanese. However, the
>> native-Japanese girlfriend of a roommate confirmed, ca.1987, the
>> presence of the [N] in the Tokyo-dialect version.
>>
>> -Wilson
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 6:14 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com
>> > wrote:
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>>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster: Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
>>> Subject: Re: Standard US English Dialect?
>>>
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> FWIW, NHK Japanese, not Tokyo Japanese is considered the standard.
>>> There is a difference. BB
>>>
>>>
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48864 USA
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