# 大きい, 買おう



## Demurral

Hi!
I've been thinking why there's this difference of writing between the two versions of the long sound "oo".
Studying kanji in class we were asked wether a kanji fit in one "sound-group" or another and all failed the same way...おう-sama no oo VS　おおkii no oo.

Why is there such a difference?  Is it because "お" marks a new sillable; and a "う", in this case, just the moraic-enlargement of the previous sillable?

I haven't read this anywhere...I just my wild guess. Please help me to solve this doubt.

Thank you.


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## Ototsan

Have you ever asked a native speaker of English why 'meet' and 'meat' are written differently but pronounced the same way?

As a native speaker of Japanese, I assure you Japanese and English are very similar in this respect. In other words, whatever specialists in phonology or history of Japanese say, there is no difference in pronounciation for ordinary users of present-day Japanese.


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## ms291052

Note that while おう and おお are pronounced identically in general, long vowels may be pronounced differently based on whether they occur in one morpheme or across a morpheme boundary. 

A classic example of this is 砂糖屋(さとうや) versus 里親(さとおや). The former long O is pronounce flatly, while the latter long O has something of a slight pitch drop between the two halves.


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## Demurral

@ototsan: I understand what you  meen . In fact, I haven't given any special importance to this differnce until our japanese teacher put an emphasis on it...now I see it was just to make the class more appealing...She herself said that she was going to look for it, because she didn't know! hehe

@ms: It's is interesting that, although I make this "differenciation across morpheme boundaries", never would have I made the relation... thanks! 

Thank you both for your quick reply!

DEmurral


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## Ototsan

ms291052 said:


> Note that while おう and おお are pronounced identically in general, long vowels may be pronounced differently based on whether they occur in one morpheme or across a morpheme boundary.
> 
> A classic example of this is 砂糖屋(さとうや) versus 里親(さとおや). The former long O is pronounce flatly, while the latter long O has something of a slight pitch drop between the two halves.



For me the only difference is that if you pronouce the two words very slowly, i.e. mora by mora, 砂糖屋 may become sa-to:-ya (long o) whereas 里親 may become sa-to-o-ya (a sequence of two short o's). But as far as normal speech is concerned, I suspect your 'classical minimal pair' is a myth perpetuated in textbooks for the purpose of mystifying foreign students


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## YangMuye

Demurral said:


> Hi!
> I've been thinking why there's this difference of writing between the two versions of the long sound "oo".
> Studying kanji in class we were asked wether a kanji fit in one "sound-group" or another and all failed the same way...おう-sama no oo VS　おおkii no oo.
> 
> Why is there such a difference?  Is it because "お" marks a new sillable; and a "う", in this case, just the moraic-enlargement of the previous sillable?
> 
> I haven't read this anywhere...I just my wild guess. Please help me to solve this doubt.
> 
> Thank you.


大きい=ohokisi
買おう=kahamu
王=wau(maybe from wagu, because the Chinese pronunciation is wang)

In Japanese, all vowels must be separated by consonants. But later all /h/ were voiced during speech, then ohoki->owoki->ooki, kahamu->kawamu->kawau. Without the effect of consonant, hamu->wau->wou->ou, later ou->oo. The last change is not reflected in spelling.
The borrowing loan words from Chinese also broke this rule. To imitate Chinese diphthong, au ei eu and apu ipu upu opu(later have become ou yuu uu ou) are introduced into Japanese.
If you find a word has a long vowel like ou or ei or ui or or you or yuu, then it's from Chinese.
If you find a word has a long vowel like aa ii ee oo, it must be 和語.
If you find a word has a long vowel like au, it's must be a typo. all au sound have become ou in written text, although the actual pronunciation is oo.

Simply speaking, the spelling does not reflect the actual pronunciation.


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## Demurral

Impressive! Thank you for this clear and extense explanation.

Dem.


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## Aoyama

> 大きい=ohokisi
> 買おう=kahamu
> 王=wau(maybe from wagu, because the Chinese pronunciation is wang)


 this one, as impressive as it could be, I don't understand ... Are you refering to old Japanese (kobun) ?
大きい=ohoki (why si ?)
買おう=ka*hu*
王=wau OK(maybe from wagu*, because the Chinese pronunciation is wang) * why wagu ?


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## YangMuye

Aoyama said:


> this one, as impressive as it could be, I don't understand ... Are you refering to old Japanese (kobun) ? Yes
> 大きい=ohoki (why si ?) I made a mistake. 大きい is always 大きい, not 大きし. It's from the na-adjective 大きな(noun 大き + なる).
> 買おう=ka*hu* kahu is 買う, not 買おう
> 王=wau OK(maybe from wagu*, because the Chinese pronunciation is wang) * why wagu ? It's just my guess. Don't believe it. Japanese use g- to map chinese ng-, but use -u to map chinese -ng. Maybe, there was a even older version "wagu", then wagu->wau.


Though knowing this is useless for a learner.


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## Aoyama

Hum, this will go beyond the scope of this thread.
But I finally agree with 





> wagu->wau.


 (though it won't prove anything further) because of the fact that in Japanese "g" can be pronounced " 'ng" so the leap between wa*g*u > wa'*ng*u > wau > wo > o is possible.


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## Flaminius

> But I finally agree with


No, no.  Please don't.  For _*wagu_ to be a sensible hypothesis, わぐ (or its _maňňyōgana_ equivalent) should be recorded somewhere.  Historically, 王 was associated with the hiragana わう, and I haven't seen anything else.


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## Aoyama

Quod erat demonstrandum ...


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## YangMuye

In 吳音 system, all Chinese "n- ng- m- -n -m" are mapped to "n- g- m- -nn -mu" so neatly except -ng, which is very strange.
The so-called 吳音 is even earlier than 万葉仮名. And some words that were though as 和語 now has been regarded as loan-words from 上古漢語, it's reasonable that sounds recorded by 万葉仮名 is not the originally version. Since Japanese did not record their language before using 仮名, we can't answer the question.

quotation from Wikipedia:
末子音(韻尾)、とくに /ŋ/ を表す規則が一定していない。呉音でも -ウ や -イ が添えられることが多いが、公(ク)のように省略されているものもある。双六(スゴロク)のようにガ行音を充てたものもいくらか見受けられる。
このような例は一般名詞には少なく、地名や人名に多い。相模（サガミ）、相良（サガラ）、愛宕（アタゴ）、鳳至（フゲシ）など。



In China, 地名や人名 have a tendency to retain the old pronunciation.

Anyway, since I can't prove the hypothesis, I have claimed that 





YangMuye said:


> It's just my guess. Don't believe it.


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## Flaminius

YangMuye said:


> In 吳音 system, all Chinese "n- ng- m- -n -m" are mapped to "n- g- m- -nn -mu" so neatly except -ng, which is very strange.


Did you mean mapped to "n- g- m- -n -mu"?



> The so-called 吳音 is even earlier than 万葉仮名.


The same source that you quoted says that 万葉仮名 is exactly 呉音.



> このような例は一般名詞には少なく、地名や人名に多い。相模（サガミ）、相良（サガラ）、愛宕（アタゴ）、鳳至（フゲシ）など。


I am aware of the archaic ways of transcribing -ŋ, but not with /ŋu/.  Most of the cases I know are either by /ŋo/ or /ŋa/, in other words, with open vowels.


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## YangMuye

Flaminius said:


> Did you mean mapped to "n- g- m- -n -mu"


Yes. But the time 万葉仮名 was introduced into Japanese, there was no symbol for ン. Where did this ん come from? I don't know.



Flaminius said:


> The same source that you quoted says that 万葉仮名 is exactly 呉音.


Simply because all 漢字音 which were used before new 漢音 are called 吳音.



Flaminius said:


> I am aware of the archaic ways of transcribing -ŋ, but not with /ŋu/.  Most of the cases I know are either by /ŋo/ or /ŋa/, in other words, with open vowels.


It's interesting that the original pronunciation do really have -ng, and Japanese are aware of it. Why did them disappeared?

One hypothesis: the original pronunciation is a sound between -ng and -u, there are two ways to record it.(just like that in 漢音: the m sometimes is nasal, 明 mei; sometimes is not, 美 bei)
Another hypothesis: simply because the かな representation can't reflect the original pronunciation.

Moreover, 万葉仮名 itself can not tell you how is a kanji to be read. It didn't need to use two kanji to represent another kanji.


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## Aoyama

This debate is a bit difficult to follow (at least for me).
When you say : 





> Historically, 王 was associated with the hiragana わう


 you mean わう _written in hiragana_ or was there ONE hiragana to render わう ?


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## Flaminius

わう _written in hiragana_


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