Japanese loan phonology
From time to time, I’ve observed that I mishear /p/ as /h/, in particular in initial position. It doesn’t happen all the time, but occasionally it does, and it hinders understanding (it might be that it happens more than I notice it, but in many cases it doesn’t really matter for parsing). Now, me and my office mate have a running joke that I do this because of my experience with Japanese, in which /h/ and /p/ alternate in certain morphophonological environments (in addition to h/b and b/p alternations). Historically this is due to intervocalic weakening of /p/ to /h/ via some intermediate steps.
One day, another colleague was walking by, and during a conversation with him, he evidently misheard one of our /p/s as as /h/ — and, crucially, he is very familiar with Japanese. So the theory lives on…
I wonder if others have experienced anything like this (assuming that there is a “this” to be experienced).
I paven’t ever peard any heople hronouncing p’s for h’s before… though herhaps this is hossible. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. But seriously, I’m intrigued by the prospect. I’ve taken some Japanese and am aware of the h/p/b phenomenon… and wondered how H got mixed up with the other obvious pair of P/B. When you mention that you sometimes mishear those letters, it makes me wonder if I have too, but never paid attention to it. There must be something there, as the Japanese focus so much attention on this in their language.
Hello everyone! Avid reader here and I think I might be able to add some insight into this mishearing. I work at an English language school in Honolulu and as you can imagine there are many Japanese students (as well as Swiss- go figure). Many of the Japanese are interested in taking “Hula” lessons but they repeatedly spell it “Fula” and sometimes even confuse the two phonemes. Japanese does have both a /f/ and /h/ sound though not at sentence initial. This could be part of the explanation.
Thanks so much!
Mahalo!
The reason behind the p/b/p thing in Japanese is due to sound change. Many (many) years ago, there were no h’s in Japanese, just p’s (or maybe f). The voiced counterpart to the p/f was, of course, b. Then, over time, the p’s became h’s - but the b stayed the same. Then, in some cases, the p’s didn’t go away either (like, after an n, or when there were two p’s in a row).
Josh: that’s interesting. Part of that, I’m sure, is that as you say there is no “hu” sound in Japanese - they have to write it (and pronounce it) as “fu” (actually, the “f” is not exactly an English “f” [look up "bilabial fricative"]).