--- Berthold Frommann <listen@...> wrote:
> Dear Andrew,
>
> > As many of you surely know, Japanese has a pitch
> > accent and there are many words with identical
> > pronunciation which are distinguished only by the
> > accent. I am very interested in how dictionaries
> > have illustrated this accent - especially Japanese
> > monolingual dictionaries.
> >
> > It seems the vast majority don't show it at all.
> > The only ones I've found so far have been a very
> > few Japanese<->English dictionaries. The one I
have
> > shows just an acute accent on one syllable, only
> > in the Romaji. The other system I have seen but do
> > not have available to check. I seem to remember
> > that it uses an acute to show where a word raises
> > in pitch and a grave to show where it is lowered
> > again - again only in the Romaji.
>
> There are several different systems to accomplish
> this:
>
> 1. accent marks (acute, grave)
> 2. numbers (counting from the front or back)
> 3. using L for "low" and H for "high". (e.g. LHLL
> for "toshokan"); but you'll find this mainly in
> linguistic papers rather than in dictionaries.
> 4. using a .... (how to describe it?) .... L-like
> shape rotated by 90 degrees when the pitch raises
> and the mirror-image of this when the pitch
> comes down again.
>
> Two links to illustrate number 4:
>
http://member.newsguy.com/~sakusha/dict/martin-je.html
>
http://member.newsguy.com/~sakusha/dict/kenkyusha-je.html
>
> In different Japanese dialects, there are entirely
> different accent systems. But in standard Japanese,
> there are the following rules:
>
> - if the first syllable is L, then the second
> syllable must be H (and vice versa). Seasaw-
> principle.
> - the pitch stays high until you encounter an
> accented syllable, an accent nucleus. After this,
> it drops.
> - as soon as the pitch gets low, it stays low (up to
> the end of your phrase).
>
> Because of these rules, you would just have to mark
> the accented syllable - and you're done. The pitch
> of the other syllables can be determined by the
> rules (i.e., you only have to mark where the pitch
> falls). That's why many dictionaries (esp.
> Monolingual Japanese ones) just show some innocent-
> looking numbers, but depending on the dictionary you
> use, they either count from the front or from the
> back.
> AFAIR, the NHK Pronouncing Dictionary counts from
> the front, which is a bit inconvenient sometimes.
> (the ending -shii of adjectives always has the
> accent on the "shi", so both "muzukashii" and
> "urayamashii" would be [2] if counting from the
> back, but [4] resp. [5] when counting from the
> front ...)
>
> If a word doesn't contain any accent nucleus, it is
> marked as [0]. Such a word inherits the pitch of
> what came before of it. Only at the beginning of
> a phrase, it's LH...... (and then staying H).
>
> Typographically speaking, using numbers is certainly
> the most convenient and most widely available
> method, for it can be used on all computer systems
> (in contrast to accented characters or special
> marks).

Thank you for your very detailed and informative
reply.
Besides my own interest in such things I'm also asking
because the issue has arisen on Wiktionary:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#Accent_in_Japanese_words

I'll share some comments from Yajuu, a contributor
there:

Unfortunately, many ‘ŒêŽ«“T (kokugojiten, Japanese-
Japanese dictionaries) don't show the accent. That's
why there are separate accent dictionaries for non-
Tokyoites (and foreigners). There is a relatively
standard notation, however: the word is written in
kana and a line is draw over the portion of the word
that has high pitch. My accent dictionary uses a
variant of that notation (with a small downward notch
indicating where high pitch turns to low pitch). Of
course, this is not something worth trying in
Wiktionary. The number notation which I proposed above
is used in the ‘厫—Ñ (daijirin) dictionary
(http://www.nifty.com/dictionary/).

:Realistically, I can't see any alternative to the
number notation. We don't want to go down the roomaji
road, because many if not most students of Japanese
absolutely detest roomaji. Kana with lines or acutes
over doesn't seem a very good solution either. And the
number notation '''is''' brilliant. It is easy to
understand and can readily be extended to phrases
longer than one word (e.g. the accent of —Õ‹@‰ž•Ï
(rinki ouhen) can be denoted 1-0).
:--[[User:Yajuu|Yajuu]] 13:03, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)


This raises some more questions. I'd like to know more
about these "accent dictionaries". What is the
Japanese
name for them? How much would I need to pay for one?
Are they available for dialects besides Tokyo? Would
the same accent system work for all the major
dialects?
Does Unicode have the "L-shaped" symbol? Has it been
proposed? Are the Unicode people on this list aware of
it? Can anybody point me to a web page or scan me a
picture of this symbol being used with kana only?

Obviously I don't necessarily agree with Yajuu's view
that Wiktionary should use one of the number systems.
I'd like to know as much as possible about the
typographical systems first. Plus I'd like to know
that
such typographical systems are at least supported or
planned to be supported by Unicode.

Andrew Dunbar.


=====
http://linguaphile.sf.net/cgi-bin/translator.pl http://www.abisource.com





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