Wisteria Darling
Quick question:
I was recently reading on and off in the new book "The Unfolding of Language", a new little study on linguistics through the history of language...
There is a "law" on the degeneration of sounds in almost all languages, how certain letter's sounds go naturally into another letter's sound. One example used in the book was the word "hara-kiri". One of the sound laws was that ancient "p" goes to "f" and from there to "h". So theoretically in the past, were Japanese pronouncing "fara" and/or "para"?
Just wondering if you have encountered this in anything?
I was recently reading on and off in the new book "The Unfolding of Language", a new little study on linguistics through the history of language...
There is a "law" on the degeneration of sounds in almost all languages, how certain letter's sounds go naturally into another letter's sound. One example used in the book was the word "hara-kiri". One of the sound laws was that ancient "p" goes to "f" and from there to "h". So theoretically in the past, were Japanese pronouncing "fara" and/or "para"?
Just wondering if you have encountered this in anything?
Most of the changes that would have been represented with that sort of sound change are in texts that are essentially out of my reach right now. From what I've heard (and deduced through some logic) is that in some Nara texts there's things written with a "p" sound. In various romanizations of gods names from the Kojiki and Nihongi, parts of one of Amaterasu's very long names has pikopiko instead of the modern hikohiko. I don't know if that entire thread went to the f-sound in the interrim, but it did transition into the h, with only the hu being pronounced with the slight f.
There's also conjecture on how the long vowels formed with appropriate intermediate pronunciations as well. It seems that the links to the rekishiteki kanazukai weren't as comprehensive as I would have liked, so I'll try to find anything else in my textbooks to illustrate other "sound degenerations" in Japanese from ancient to modern. biggrin
My current textbooks and lectures aren't giving too much insight into the works written back in the earliest days of written Japanese. : ( I'll see if I can find out anything more to answer your question, though. biggrin
