3

I was trying to explain to someone why spelling & reading in Japanese (at least with kana) is easy because the name of the letter is its pronuncation. (Yes, I realize kana are not strictly "letters", but for the sake of brevity...)

Kana Name Pronunciation
た "tah" "tah"
み "mee" "mee"
etc.

So if you can see a word or sentence (particles aside), you know exactly how to pronounce it. Conversely, if you can hear/say a word, you know exactly how to spell it.

However, English and many other languages are not like this. The letter's name is completely different than how you'd say it.

Letter Name Pronunciation
A "ay" "ah", "ah", "a(nt)"
B "bee" "b-"
C "see" "k-", "s-"
etc.

Is there some linguistic term (in Japanese, or any language) around this name/pronunciation relationship? And if so, are there terms that encompass the sameness of Japanese relationship, and the difference of English one?

istrasci
  • 44,120
  • 5
  • 112
  • 259
  • This question seems better suited for the Linguistics SE. – Leebo Oct 02 '23 at 21:57
  • I didn't realize they were the names of the characters. I've thought we are just reading them. – aguijonazo Oct 03 '23 at 01:00
  • @aguijonazo, 例えば「ひらがなの『た』」といえば、文字について話しているとは明らかではないですか。 Or would you talk about the kana themselves in some other fashion? (Honest question.) – Eiríkr Útlendi Oct 03 '23 at 01:09
  • 2
    @aguijonazo Although you maybe have actual names for some of them, like 「そくおん」 or 「ちいさいつ」 for 「 っ 」... – Arfrever Oct 03 '23 at 01:10
  • Regarding istrasci's original question about terms for letter / sound relationships, I have not heard such terms, but if I had to invent them, then maybe: homoliterophony (noun), homoliterophonic (adjective), heteroliterophony (noun), heteroliterophonic (adjective) :) . – Arfrever Oct 03 '23 at 01:18
  • 2
    I think this is a natural consequence from the difference between alphabetic scripts (with distinct letters for each vowel and consonant) and syllabic scripts (with distinct letters for each consonant-vowel combination). It would be difficult to spell out "strength" without using the distinct names of each character, but Japanese has no such problem (well, basically... we do need "ちいさいつ" and so on sometimes). – naruto Oct 03 '23 at 01:19
  • @naruto It is not too hard to pronounce a single-consonant word. They exist in some languages, e.g. Czech language has pronounced [k], pronounced [s], pronounced [v], pronounced [z]. – Arfrever Oct 03 '23 at 01:28
  • 1
    @EiríkrÚtlendi - Those characters are referred to by their readings when necessary. If you call them names, I guess they are. I'm just saying I've never seen it that way. – aguijonazo Oct 03 '23 at 01:37
  • @Arfrever - そくおん doesn't refer to a character but a sound, or a phonetic phenomenon. – aguijonazo Oct 03 '23 at 01:38
  • The original question aside, I think the Name column should be removed from the table. – aguijonazo Oct 03 '23 at 01:43
  • @aguijonazo If you have to say "「っ」を書いて" aloud to somebody, how will you read it? そくおんきごう, そくおんもじ? – Arfrever Oct 03 '23 at 02:10
  • @Arfrever - 小さい「つ」, of course. For my stand on つ, read my reply to Eiríkr Útlendi. – aguijonazo Oct 03 '23 at 02:15
  • It is also interesting to think why the phonetic code (such as alpha, bravo, charlie...) cannot be a name of alphabet. I think this is simply because people treat "names" as a privileged way of indicating each letter for historical and cultural reasons. – rk03 Oct 03 '23 at 04:45
  • I personally feel that indicating letters (hiragana and katakana) by its reading is not a privileged way, even though quite common in Japanese. This feeling may arise from 1. some letters are hard to be pronounced by themselves (e.g. 「っ」,「ー」) 2. some pairs of letters are no longer distinctive in quite a few speakers' pronunciation (e.g.「じ」and「ぢ」,「お」and「を」) 3. hiragana and katakana is not distinctive on pronunciation 4. analogy to the ways used to indicate kanjis. – rk03 Oct 03 '23 at 04:45
  • One could argue that the fact that (when distinction is necessary) じ and ぢ are commonly referred to as 「し」に点々 and 「ち」に点々, respectively, is an indication that they don't have names as such. – aguijonazo Oct 03 '23 at 05:40
  • Also in Japanese, a single letter can represent multiple sounds like ん. I guess names/pronunciation are not exactly related. It's rather that there're sounds first, then letters that represent them, then those letters have names. – sundowner Oct 03 '23 at 14:35

1 Answers1

1

In linguistics, the consistency of pronunciation for each letter or character in a language like Japanese Katakana or Hindi is referred to as "phonemic orthography." This term describes a writing system where each symbol (or letter) consistently represents the same sound (or phoneme). In languages with phonemic orthography, there's a direct and consistent correspondence between the written symbols and their pronunciation, which makes it easier to predict how a word is pronounced based on its spelling.

In contrast, languages like English, which have a high degree of variation in how letters are pronounced in different contexts, are said to have a "deep orthography." This means there's a complex relationship between spelling and pronunciation, with many exceptions and irregularities.

Thus, the key term here is "phonemic orthography," describing the straightforward, predictable relationship between spelling and pronunciation in languages like Japanese (when written in Katakana) and Hindi.

Himanshu Jain
  • 211
  • 1
  • 3