Hmm, so far I have understood one (at least) of the rules for when the normal reading of a… - Feed Post by strawhat64
Hmm, so far I have understood one (at least) of the rules for when the normal reading of a Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji changes. This rule concerns は、ほ、ひ、へ、ふ and of course their Katakana counterparts. The rule works like this, if a Kanji (or not) which ends with "ん" follows one of the letters I stated above then they transform to ぱ、ぽ、ぴ、ぺ and ぷ respectively. There are also rules for the other letters as well but I still haven't figured it out yet. Does anyone know a page where they explain this? I don't know how this transformation is called so I can't search for it.
posted by strawhat64
Comments 4
I will post a few examples to see what I am talking about.
文法－ぶんぽう（法 is normally read as ほう）
軍服－ぐんぷく（服 is normally read as ふく）
These are the ones I can think of right now.
@strawhat, It's not quite so clear cut as that. Think things like "300" being さんびゃく rather than さんぴゃく, and then "400" being よんひゃく.
But you are doing the right thing with using your brain to notice patterns like this. For some people—especially those who rely heavily on romaji—things like this endlessly fly right over their heads; they needlessly memorise long lists rather than just apply a little bit of logic.
連濁（れんだく）"rendaku" (sequential voicing) is the term to search.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology
↑The whole page is great, but the "sound change" section is the most relevant part.
http://www.imabi.net/l289rendaku.htm
↑The rest of the phonology lessons on Imabi are awesome too (287~293). However, although Imabi is one of my favourites, it isn't exactly light reading... There should be other sites like Tae Kim's that explain it a lot simpler.- Man, its way too confusing.
- http://seas3.elte.hu/ocp13/abstracts/48b_Vance_OCP13_submission_8.pdf
↑"Post nasal voicing". I knew there was a better term for it. For the specific thing you asked, rendaku isn't really the correct term but it's still the term this nearly always gets lumped under on learn Japanese websites.
Not that this is likely to help make things less confusing... Just been really bugging me since I first saw your post that I couldn't remember the proper name for it. ^^;
