"Ishi"

[Golgo_13]

Today's lesson:

The Japanese words for physician (ishi), intention (ishi) and rock/stone (ishi) are all pronounced slightly differently.

Can you distinguish them?

 

[PaulTB]

Pronounced? Or pitch accented?

 

[Ewok85]

Would it be a similar deal to hashi (chopsticks) hashi (bridge) hashi (edge) in pitch differences?

And 'ame' (sweets/rain)

 

[PaulTB]

Now I'm in the living room.</cryptic>

 

[Elizabeth]

Would it be a similar deal to hashi (chopsticks) hashi (bridge) hashi (edge) in pitch differences?

And 'ame' (sweets/rain)

For ame meaning rain the pitch lowers with a stress on the me. What is the distinction within hashi ?

 

[Golgo_13]

The original topic was "ishi"

 

[Elizabeth]

Would it be a similar deal to hashi (chopsticks) hashi (bridge) hashi (edge) in pitch differences?

And 'ame' (sweets/rain)

My own Ishi pitch accent account would be : Doctor -- High, Low ; Stone/Rock -- even and Intention/Mind haven't used enough to know. At any rate, I did some formal investigating into hashi and found that Chopsticks is High--Low pitch accented, Bridge is Low--High, Hashi is even.

 

[Golgo_13]

My own Ishi pitch accent account would be : Doctor -- High, Low ; Stone/Rock -- even and Intention/Mind haven't used enough to know. At any rate, I did some formal investigating into hashi and found that Chopsticks is High--Low pitch accented, Bridge is Low--High, Hashi is even.

Nice work on "Hashi"!

Now, how about Hashish!

 

[rquethe]

I'd be interested in hearing 3 sentences with those three different "hashi" accents in them from a native speaker. Because I'm not so sure I would be able to distinguish them without a context. I wonder how much emphasis Japanese people put on different intonations? Because changing pitches isn't the same as putting emphasis on a syllable which they don't do at all and it seems to me that it's not a big deal, just like it wouldn't really be in English.

Chinese is a different matter. Man alive, I'd get eaten up trying to learn that language... I might try anyway :0

 

[Golgo_13]

Here's the answer:

for "doctor" there's an emphasis on the "i" in "ishi" since in this case the "i" refers to medicine and "shi" a practitioner.

for "stone", more emphasis on the "shi"

for intention, neutral.

 

[Elizabeth]

Here's the answer:

for "doctor" there's an emphasis on the "i" in "ishi" since in this case the "i" refers to medicine and "shi" a practitioner.

Although I've been instructed time and again that oishasan is preferable for going to see the doctor, the cadence is most likely the same.

 

[Golgo_13]

Although I've been instructed time and again that oishasan is preferable for going to see the doctor, the cadence is most likely the same.

Like the difference between "doctor" and "physician".

Bugs Bunny would never say "What's up, phys?"

 

[neko_girl22]

my husband always reminds me not to put any emphasis in a word in Japanese. Although, I'm not saying you're wrong, I think learning about where to put a slight emphasis is definately not for beginners. I'm sure you've heard some horrid gaijin accents - ko- NI-chi-wa - where they speak Japanese as if it's English.

 

[Glenn]

I know that some words are pronounced with the opposite accent in Kansai than they are in Kantou (I think that "hashi" may be one of them).

This reminds me of something that I read once about accents in Japanese. Many people say that Japanese accents are different than English because the Japanese use pitch instead of volume to distinguish the accented syllable. However, this is not true, because English uses pitch also to mark accented syllables, and Japanese uses volume also. The major difference in pronunciation comes from the fact that Japanese uses "machine gun rythm" while English uses "morse code rythm." So when learning to pronounce Japanese words, beginners (well, native English speakers, anyway) should focus much more on keeping every syllable the same length than on pitch versus volume.

Now I really wish that I could remember where I read that....

 

[Elizabeth]

I know that some words are pronounced with the opposite accent in Kansai than they are in Kantou (I think that "hashi" may be one of them).

Yeah, it could well be. The Tokyoites I've asked about this all say that "Ishi" for both intention and stone puts stress on the second syllable for instance and I certainly can't tell any difference without more context.

 

[Kaleikuiha]

Yeah Elizabeth, I'm the same way. Like the word aloha. It depends on how you pronounce it andthe context as it emplaced into the phase tthat in which you are stating could take on defernt meanings. The most common meanings are Love, Hello, Goodbye... if I were to write it out in phonetices then I could show how the sound changes in which the meaning is changed thus.