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How to understand the pronunciation as listed in Wiktionary

Japanese Language Asked on November 25, 2021

Wiktionary has two transcriptions:

(Tokyo)¹ わ[たし]{——}² [wàtáshí]³ (Heiban⁴ – [0]⁵)

IPA: [[ɰᵝa̠ta̠ɕi]]

What is the 1st one called and how is it read?

  1. "Tokyo" stands for the Tokyo dialect
  2. What does the bar over the kana mean?
  3. What do diacritics mean here?
  4. Pitch pattern, explained in Wiktionary
  5. What does the number mean?

One Answer

The Wiktionary entry as I found it looks as follows:

Pronunciation

  • (Tokyo) わ[たし]【HH】 [wàtáshí] (Heiban – [0])
  • IPA: [[ɰᵝa̠ta̠ɕi]]

Let's take a look what this means:

  • (Tokyo)
    means the listed pronunciation is for the Tokyo dialect

  • わ[たし]【HH】
    pitch accent notation with [◯]【H】 indicating a high pitch

  • [wàtáshí]
    indicating pitch accent in a romanization (using the grave and acute accent diacritics on the vowel, with the acute accent ´ indicating high pitch)

  • (Heiban – [0])
    indicating that the pitch accent is of the heiban-gata type, i.e. first mora ("syllable") has a low pitch and all subsequent morae have a high pitch — in dictionaries this would be denoted [0] since the number in brackets indicates after which mora the drop in pitch occurs (and in わたし there is no drop in pitch)

  • IPA: [[ɰᵝa̠ta̠ɕi]]
    IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) notation with

    • [/ɰ/] being an A-type sound (anticipating the -a of wa),
    • [/ᵝ/] indicating that for the sound the lips are closed a little (a type of secondary articulation)
    • [/a̠/] being a "standard" A-type sound, that is retracted (i.e. pronounced further back in the mouth than the [[a]] sound) as indicated by the minus sign diacritic below the [/a/]
    • [/ɕ/] being the usual SH-type sound in Japanese

Answered by Earthliŋ on November 25, 2021

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