#japanese study

[chulip-blossoms]

a really really really underrated feeling in learning a different language is when you start to hear words. as in it's no longer a string of sounds, you can parse through where words start and stop as you're hearing them. even words that you don't know what they mean yet but you can distinctly hear it as a whole word

[isshonihongo]

Sound Changes - Part 2 (れんだく)

The Kanji 国, used to represent “country” is very helpful in showing examples of sound changes. Notice that the only on’yomi for 国 is こく.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that 国 is always pronounced as こく！In the previous post, we talked about a sound change that results in reading Kanji characters with そくおん, or the small つ. Here is an example with こっき, the word for “a national flag”:

The Kanji 国 is read with a small つ instead of its normal reading. That is one kind of sound change that happens to Kanji sometimes.

In this post, we’re going to talk about a different sound change that will also change the way you pronounce Kanji characters in certain situations.

Now, let’s talk about Rendaku!

だくてん and はんだくてん

Take a look at these 25 characters:

The upper 20 characters all have what looks like single quotation marks next to them. Those marks are called だくてん. The lower 5 characters have what looks like the degree symbol next to them. Those marks are called はんだくてん.

Those Hiragana characters written without any mark are all voiceless. Once you add a だくてん they become their voiced versions. ぱぴぷぺぽ are somewhere between voiced and unvoiced. This is why the symbol is called a はんだくてん (はん meaning “half”).

All together, these 25 characters are called “voiced obstruents”. OK, now you’re on your way to understanding rendaku!

Character Changes

Let’s do a little exercise. I’m going to give you 7 words. If a character has a voiceless counterpart, I want you to swap the characters. For example, the word こみ would change to ごみ. Remember, only certain characters are able to change!

かみ かな そら しま たま つくり ち

Ready for the answers??

かみ → がみ かな → がな そら → ぞら しま → じま たま → だま つくり → づくり ち → じ

Notice that つくり becomes づくり and not づぐり. Not every character that can change will change; This is because rendaku only changes the first character!

Characters from the H sound group have 2 possible changes. The tendency is for them to change to their B sound group counterparts.

Therefore words like ほね、ひ、and ふね would normally become ぼね、び、and ぶね respectively. I say “normally” because there are many exceptions.

For now, here is a visualization showing which characters can change because of rendaku:

How Exactly Does れんだく Work?

Rendaku only occurs in compound words. It is when the 2nd word’s first consonant sound changes away from being voiced**. Whew, what a mouthful! Here’s an example for you with our helpful Kanji 国:

The word 中国 means “China”. Knowing the pronunciation of the two words, it’s a bit counterintuitive to pronounce it as ちゅうごく. This is why knowing a little bit about rendaku is important.

Now, here are 7 compound words that use the words I gave you earlier. Next to them, I’ll write the actual readings and meanings.

て + かみ → てがみ (a letter or a note) ひら + かな → ひらがな (one of the 4 ways to write Japanese) あお + そら → あおぞら (the blue sky) なか + しま → なかじま (a Japanese last name) けん + たま → けんだま (a Japanese cup-and-ball game) さけ + つくり → さけづくり (sake brewing) はな + ち → はなぢ* (a nosebleed)

When Does Rendaku Occur?

かきくけこ さしすせそ たちつてと はひふへほ

Rendaku can only occur if the 2nd compound begins with one of the 20 characters above. When you have both parts of a compound word that originated in Japan, and the 2nd word starts with one of those characters, rendaku tends to occur. The 7 compound words from earlier are examples.

On the other hand, words that originated in China and other countries tend to block rendaku from occurring. I have to say “tend to” because exceptions are aplenty!

しん + そこ → しんそこ (the bottom of one’s heart) おく + そこ → おくそこ (depths)

There is no rendaku because even though そこ( meaning bottom) is a Japanese word, both しん (心, meaning heart) and おく (奥, meaning interior, or back part) are words that came from China.

Lyman’s Law and Voiced Obstruents

Remember that “voiced obstruent” is the easy way to group the 25 Hiragana characters I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Rendaku seems to suffer from a bit of jealousy. Remember that the whole point of rendaku is to make voiced obstruent sounds from voiceless sounds. Well if the 1st word in the compound already has a voiced obstruent, rendaku tends not to happen. If it’s the 2nd word in the compound, it almost always does NOT happen (this is a rule called Lyman’s Law).

Here are 3 examples:

みず + たま → みずたま ざ + ふとん → ざぶとん はる + かぜ → はるかぜ

With みずたま、みず has a voiced obstruent, so たま doesn’t rendaku. However with ざぶとん、even though ざ is a voiced obstruent, ふとん still undergoes rendaku. When the first word of the compound has a voiced obstruent, rendaku is fairly unpredictable.

はるかぜ follows Lyman’s Law, so because of the ぜ in かぜ、it won’t rendaku. Lyman’s Law is much more reliable when it comes to predicting rendaku.

Rendaku and Avoiding Confusion

There are times when it appears that a word should rendaku but it doesn’t. This is because sometimes, rendaku would lead to a confusing homophone. Here are some examples:

にゅうがく + しけん → にゅうがくしけん ほうそう + さっか → ほうそうさっか かん + こく → かんこく

If にゅうがくしけん underwent rendaku it would become にゅうがくじけん which means “a starting school incident”! Similarly, ほうそうさっか would become ほうそうざっか, which means “random broadcasts”. Finally, かんこく means Korea. However かんごく means “prison”. These are mistakes that would definitely get you a strange look if you made them in your conversations! 😅

The opposite situation is also true in rare cases.

ちゅう + こく → ちゅうごく

As mentioned earlier, ちゅうごく means “China”. However, if you say ちゅうこくthe meaning becomes “advice” or “warning”.

Prefixes That Block Rendaku

The last thing we should talk about is how some prefixes affect rendaku. It turns out that some prefixes actually block rendaku from occurring. Let’s take a look:

① 御 (お or み) Honorific / Respectful Prefix

お + はし → おはし (chopsticks)

② 片 (かた) One-Way or Single

かた + かな → かたかな (one of the 4 ways to write Japanese words)

This is the reason that かな changes to がな in ひらがな; ひら is not a rendaku blocker!

③ 白 (しろ or しら) White

しろ + くま → しろくま (polar bears) しら + こ → しらこ (a winter delicacy made from cod or salmon)

A quick google search will tell you exactly which part of the cod or salmon is used to make Shirako. (Hint: it can only come from males.) Shirako is definitely not my cup of tea, mainly because of its texture.

④ 毎 (まい) Every

まい + とし → まいとし (every year)

⑤ 半 (はん) Half

はん + しん → はんしん (half of the body)

These are just 5 examples. There are many more out in the wild that you will come across as you learn more and more vocabulary. Also, those prefixes tend to block rendaku; it’s definitely not a guaranteed rule!

Conclusion

There you have it! There is a lot more to rendaku, but I think this is enough information for now.

I find it very interesting how sound changes affect the sounds in compound words. そくおんびん (changing a sound to the small つ) and れんだく can be thought of as two sides of the same coin. Both affect the pronunciation near the midpoint of a compound word. Here is a helpful visualization for you:

As for rendaku, because of how many exceptions there are, I would simply advise you to be flexible when you learn new compound words. If one part of the word sounds “off” a bit, it might be rendaku or sokuon-bin at work! Good luck!

Rice & Peace

– AL (アル)

👋🏾

*The Kanji for “blood” is 血. It’s on’yomi is ち so the correct form after rendaku is ぢ. However, you might see “nosebleed” written as はなじ sometimes because ぢ is becoming rarer and rarer nowadays.

**Interestingly, both Kanji sound changes (small つ replacements, called そくおんびん, and れんだく) only occur at the midpoint of compound words. There’s something about the end of the first word and the beginning of the second word that causes these sound changes to happen!

[rikkakotoba]

The Difference Between シ and ツ

The secrets to easily recognizing these kana are hidden in the stroke order!

(images from japanesewordswriting.com)

SHI し シ

Hiragana し begins with a long vertical stroke down the left side, and ends with a swish to the upper right.

Katakana シ begins with two small lines along the left side, and ends with the same swish to the upper right that its hiragana counterpart had.

You can tell that シ is し because the lines on シ will be coming from the left side!

TSU つ ツ

Hiragana つ begins with a long horizontal stroke across the top, and curves down with a swish to the bottom left at the end.

Katakana ツ begins with two small lines along the top, and ends with the same swish to the bottom left that its hiragana counterpart had.

You can tell ツ is つ because the lines on ツ will be coming from the top!

More Pics to Further Illustrate

Hopefully this helped someone out there! Best of luck in everyone’s studies!

[horrorjapan]

Hope you're all doing well! I don't really post much here anymore, but wanted to put in a little bit of promo for an Instagram account I'm co-running to help people learn Japanese. We post a few Kanji games a few times a week, and I try include yokai and a horror touch whenver possible! We recently posted about 尻目 which I thought the yokai fans among you may enjoy! Would be great to see more of you over there. https://www.instagram.com/p/Da5OCMmitmH/

[meo-eiru]

Kind of a random question not about art, but about your Japanese.

Are you self-taught or did you take some sort of classes and how much did it take you to get to the lvl you're at?

If you'd be comfortable with sharing some info on that, that'd be great 💗 It's just, I dunno, very impressive to me that you have enough skill to understand media in that language and it's something that'd be very useful to me too, so I'm just gathering information :3 I don't know if that makes sense lol

Oh god you can't imagine for how long I've been meaning to answer this ask, it was constantly floating at the back of my head

I'm self-taught! I didn't take any actual Japanese lessons and have been seriously studying it for around a little over 2 years (started around the end of 2022 I think??)

I had a huge weeb phase back in middle school where I'd watch like 10 episodes of naruto per day which caused me to quickly develop an ear for Japanese and I was able to understand most of the simple sentences I heard.

Around the end of 2022 I decided I wanted to learn how to read it too (mostly so that I can have more access to Japanese yandere content) and used duolingo to quickly memorize hiragana and katakana.

As many of you are probably aware duolingo is NOT good when it comes to learning kanji though, so after experimenting with a few different apps and sites, around the start of 2023 I settled on WaniKani which is an amazing site for kanji and vocabulary learning.

I was having a lot of fun studying Japanese so after a few months I decided to try my chance at that year's JLPT N3 and actually managed to pass it. With that boost I signed up for 2024's N2 and passed it too.

Here are a few apps and youtube channels that personally helped me a lot with studying:

Nihongo no Mori

Japanese with Yuka

[linghxr]

How I’m learning Japanese kana

I’ve always wanted to learn hiragana and katakana, but it’s been a lot harder than learning hangul. After 2 failed attempts—using Duolingo and printed worksheets—I finally found a better way for me! I’m using the website Kana Pro (I assume it’s known in Japanese-learning circles).

You can select exactly which categories you want to practice, and then the site takes you through 4 stages.

Stage 1 shows you a kana, and you select the correct romaji. Stage 2 is the reverse. As you progress, correct answers fill up the blue bar, and incorrect answers subtract from it. You move to the next stage when the bar is full.

Stage 3 displays a kana and has you type the romaji. Stage 4 also has you type, but it shows a random sequence of 3 kana.

Since I have no need to write Japanese, this works well for me. But ugh, the シ (shi) vs. ツ (tsu) thing is killing me. Way worse than 茶 and 荼 or whatnot.

[orenjisupeesu]

抹茶がマスト