Unexceptional:
Part 5 –
Are
Japanese Syllables Too Short?
One of the bases for the idea that the
Japanese language is uniquely unique is the brevity of the Japanese
syllable. The implication is that the
Japanese syllable is so short that in comparison to English the difference
results in a qualitative distinction.
This is one of the reasons why some ELH Haijin will refer to Japanese as
using ‘morae’ (plural of ‘mora’) as opposed to English which uses ‘syllables’.
For
example, in a 1993 paper by Anne Cuttler and Jacques Mehler, Mora or Syllable? Speech Segmentation in
Japanese, the authors write in the Introduction:
“When
Japanese poetic forms such as the haiku are rendered in other languages, an
approximation to the prescribed form is usually achieved by specifying the
number of syllables per line . . . But morae do not necessarily correspond to
syllables. Consider the first line of
the haiku: shinshin-to. Although it has the prescribed 5 morae (shi, n, shi, n, to), it has only 3
syllables (shin, shin, to). The mora is a subsyllabic unit . . .”
To
my mind, and not a few linguists, this is simply confused thinking. As I have noted in previous posts in the Unexceptional series, the concept
‘syllable’ is not defined by the specific acoustic features of any particular
language; that is to say the fact that Japanese count acoustic features, such
as a concluding ‘n’, that English does not count does not mean that the
Japanese are not counting syllables.
What it does mean is that Japanese count sounds that English speakers do
not count. But that is true of many languages, as I have noted in previous posts.
To
my way of thinking the idea of ‘mora’ is a distinction without a
difference. If morae are subsyllabic,
then what about the English syllable ‘it’; a very brief syllable. Does the brevity of ‘it’ make it
subsyllabic? If it does not make it
subsyllabic, then why would a Japanese ‘n’ be subsyllabic? And what about other languages that also have
shorter syllables than English; languages such as Spanish and Italian? Does Spanish and Italian use morae or
syllables? Seriously; is this
distinction of any help at all? The idea
of ‘mora’ is one of those academic conjurations that is little more than jargon
posturing as insight. It should be
noted, though, that there is little agreement among linguists about this topic;
if you look up papers on syllabic timing and usage you will find a whole range
of differing opinions. There does not
seem to be any consensus.
There
is a lot of literature in linguistics on the topic of syllable duration in
various languages. Much of it is highly
technical. But I don’t want to get
side-tracked into a technical discussion when I believe that, for the most
part, these technical considerations do not clarify; rather, in my opinion,
they create a conceptual fog. However, I
think a few non-technical remarks are worth considering.
First,
Japanese is not the only language which flows by at a more rapid rate than
English. Spanish and Italian, for
example, are also more rapid than English.
When I say ‘more rapid’ I mean that the average syllable duration of
Italian and Spanish is briefer than the average syllable duration of
English. In fact there are a great many
languages that are more rapid than English.
Japanese, once again, is not unique in this regard; Japanese is
unexceptional in its pacing.
There
are also languages which are slower than English; tonal languages tend to be slower
than English because speakers need time to enunciate the tone. For this reason Chinese flows by, generally
speaking, at a slower rate than English.
In
other words, English is roughly in the middle when it comes to how fast the
sound units, or syllables, of various languages flow by. It is neither the slowest nor the
fastest. And speaking of being in the
middle range; while Japanese is more rapid than English, from the studies I
have read there are languages that are more rapid than Japanese. Again, from the studies I have read, Thai
consistently rates as the most rapid. In
other words, Japanese seems to occupy a speed that is only slightly faster than
Spanish and Italian, but is surpassed by other languages such as Thai.
This
puts both English and Japanese in the mid-range for speed of syllabic
flow. In other words, English and
Japanese share the middle ground; neither of these languages is at the
extreme. Japanese is middle-fast, while
English is middle-slow; but neither English nor Japanese is exceptional in its
pace.
Before
going further, I want to make a few remarks about the studies I have read. First, many of the studies use a very small
sampling; more than a few use a single speaker.
Statistically this leads me to be skeptical of the value of these studies. I suspect that larger samplings would yield
different results.
Further,
some of the information about speed that is used by ELH Haijin is completely
anecdotal, including some of the most often cited supporting claims. Anecdotal reporting has its place and should
not be dismissed out of hand. But
anecdotal reporting needs to be supported by further investigation if one is
going to use these reports to make broad claims about language speed.
In
addition, I have found that few studies take into account dialect
variation. Some studies I have read take
British English as their standard of the pace of English syllable flow. British English may differ from other types
of English usage in terms of syllable pace.
Anecdotally, I strongly suspect that this is true. When I was working construction, many years
ago, I worked with many men from Texas as well as those from the Louisiana
Bayou. The long, slow-paced drawl of the
Bayou dialect, I suspect, is significantly slower than standard British
English. On the other hand, I once had a
forewoman on an assembly line who was Scott by birth. Her English flew by at a rapid clip that took
me some time to key into. Again, I
suspect the pace of Scottish English differs from that of standard British
English.
The
effect of dialect is not a minor consideration.
Millions of Indians speak English either as their primary language, or
as a significant second language. The
steady flow of Indian English seems to me to differ, and to be more rapid, than
that of standard British English. Given
what appears to me to be the wide variation in the pace of syllabic flow among
different English dialects, I am reluctant to accept the generalizations about
the pace of English verses the pace of Japanese when they are based on very
small samplings of a single type of English.
Dialect
further complicates the situation when one takes into account that there are
regional dialects in Japan. The question
is, do these regional dialects effect the pace of the flow of the Japanese syllables? Again, studies that do not take this into
account make me inclined to regard their findings as of limited value; not
valueless, but limited in terms of what kind of conclusion we can draw from
their studies.
And
finally, I think it is worth pointing out that context will effect pace. If a subject knows they are being studied for
the purposes of determining the pace of their language, this will inevitably
effect their performance. It will not be
an example of a ‘natural’ interaction.
In addition, people change the pace of their output depending on the
situation. Speaking to children people
tend to speak more slowly. Speaking to
long-term friends, people might speak very rapidly in comparison to their
normal interaction. When speaking to an
audience this will also effect pace.
This
last remark about audience is significant because some of the anecdotal stories
about how rapidly people speak are derived from poetry readings. Poetry readings are a highly specialized
situation; they are not a normative use of a language and it is unlikely, I
feel, that significant generalizations can be drawn from anecdotal reports of
how people speak when reading their poetry.
None
of this is to dispute the general conclusion that Japanese syllables are, on
average, briefer than English syllables.
All the studies I have read support this conclusion. The reason I bring up the above caveats is
that even though it is true that Japanese is more rapid than English, one
should not exaggerate the differences in the pacing of the two languages. English and Japanese both occupy, as
mentioned above, a middle ground when it comes to pacing. They are not really so far apart when one looks
at the full spectrum of language pacing.
I think this point needs to be emphasized because when reading some of
the claims by ELH haijin one gets the impression that Japanese syllables are
super-fast, or extraordinarily brief.
But that simply isn’t the case; rather Japanese occupies the middle
ground with some languages just as fast and some faster. And English also occupies this middle ground
with some languages, like French, at roughly the same rate, some, like German
or Chinese, slower, and some, like Italian, Spanish, and Japanese, faster.
All
of this is very interesting, no doubt, for linguists. But I would like to suggest for the readers’
consideration that all of this discussion about syllable duration is, quite
simply, colossally irrelevant. Consider
the transmission of poetic forms from one culture to another, from one
linguistic context to another. When
Latin poets in Rome began to write in hexameters they were imitating Greek; no
one worried about the relative duration of Latin and Greek syllables. When the Sonnet moved from Italy to England
and France and Spain, no one felt that syllable duration was a factor of
concern; it is never mentioned. And
perhaps most telling, when Japanese poets wrote in Chinese forms, using Chinese
characters, what are called Kanshi,
the Japanese were unconcerned with the fact that Chinese syllables are longer
than Japanese syllables (and Chinese syllables are longer than English
syllables as well). Only in the case of
the transmission of Japanese forms such as Haiku and Tanka has this issue
been raised.
I
find this revealing; and it only makes sense if one views the Japanese language
as uniquely unique, as so completely different from other languages, from any
other language, that one is compelled to treat it differently. In other words, the foundation for the idea
that the Japanese don’t count syllables, that they count something else, is,
once again, nihonjinron, the highly
problematic, and highly suspect, idea that the Japanese people and culture are
estranged and distinct from the rest of humanity.
But
there is another reason why the relative pacing of syllable duration is
irrelevant: my view is simply that this idea that English (or other languages)
should match the duration of Japanese poetic forms is a misunderstanding of how
we should comprehend duration. I would
suggest for the readers’ consideration, especially for readers that have bought
into the idea of the significance of Japanese syllable duration, that what we
should be looking at is the relative
duration within each linguistic context, not the absolute duration of the
Japanese as a measure for non-Japanese languages.
If
Haiku in Japanese are written in 17 Japanese syllables and Haiku in English are
written in 17 English syllables, the relative duration within each linguistic context is the
same. It is not that English and
Japanese Haiku have the same absolute duration; in this they differ. Rather it is that within each linguistic
context their relative duration within their respective contexts is the
same. And, I would suggest, it is this
relative duration that matters. Notice,
though, that if one approaches the issue this way, then all the discussions
about syllable duration, syllable versus mora (or onji, or jion, or sound unit,
or whatever term is currently in fashion) simply fall away. Things become much simpler, much less cloudy,
much more direct.
This
is why I regard all these studies on duration to be a kind of huge mistake: it
is completely unnecessary and does nothing to clarify the relationship between
Japanese and non-Japanese using Japanese poetic forms. In fact, there is a great advantage to the
relative duration view: it is that for each language the same count will
apply. It will apply equally to German,
Russian, Spanish, Hindi, Zuni, and Bantu.
The Haiku in all these languages would simply be constructed using the
count of 5-7-5 syllables however each
language counts, whatever sounds they count as a syllable. Very simple.
In
other words, and in conclusion – it
doesn’t matter if Japanese syllables are shorter, longer, or the same as
English syllables. It is an
irrelevant consideration. It is time to
simply put this line of reasoning aside.
