Leech Squashing

I never noticed these until they came up in the same review session, but

免れる (まぬがれる) to avoid
逸れる (それる) to stray

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投げる なげる to throw, to pitch
殴る なぐる to strike, to punch
嘆く なげく to lament

Trouble in EN->JP session

陽気(ようき)cheerful
湯気(ゆげ)steam

They put these in the same level on purpose, didn’t they :stuck_out_tongue:

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I had 湯 come up for review right when I was learning 混. Still not convinced it was coincidence. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Just got bit by this, sorry if someone might have posted it before.

仏像 - ぶつぞう (NO rendaku)
仏僧 - ぶっそう (rendaku)

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Have you seen this:

Edit: maybe it applies to more stuff with dakuten … Dakuten indicates rendaku after all, and when it is already present it may be “forbidden” to shorten it again.

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Aren’t both of them no rendaku?

I think it’s about the tsu contraction, how do you call it?

That’s gemination

:flushed: Thanks for the correction!

I don’t get much smarter from wikipedia because of excessive technical terms, but I found this:

Japanese Phonology – Gemination

While Japanese features consonant gemination, there are some limitations in what can be geminated. Most saliently, voiced geminates are prohibited in native Japanese words.

Voiced consonant sounds are /g/, /z/, /d/, /b/, and /p/, so you will never see a tsu change in front of those.

Thoughts?

It explains why 仏像 is not ぶっぞう

Yes, I’m trying to figure out if it is a general rule. Does Sino-Japanese count as “native Japanese” here? The wiki article is not clear enough to figure out what happens.

As far as I have seen the vocab in WK this seems to hold, and should kill off some leeches.

Yeah, that’s a little ambiguous. My guess is it means it doesn’t apply to more modern loanwords, like from English or Russian or Italian or something, where you could imagine those sounds being possible. But maybe it doesn’t apply to Sino-Japanese words absolutely.

/p/ is a voiceless consonant. Case in point: 八百(はっぴゃく)

I just snatched it from Tae Kim. In your example, doesn’t it normally start out with ひゃく, which is not covered in the rule?

Sounds like a typo on Tae Kim’s part, I guess. In the wikipedia source you found it, it says that voiced geminates are prohibited, so rendakued word by definition wouldn’t count as exceptions because /p/ not a voiced consonant, but a plosive requiring only a burst of air and one’s lips to produce the sound.

Japanese counters feature this with 八 , 六, and other numbers causing a rendaku which results in a gemination with /p/: 八分, 六本, 六分, 六百, 六匹, etc. But there are other words like 発表(はっぴょう), 法被 (はっぴ), etc. that have this same property, so I’m pretty sure /p/ is not included in this group of sounds that cannot be geminated.

Yes, I think you are right. I was thinking more in terms of how a kanji reads before modification.

How about this rule:

  1. You have a kanji compound (with two items*), the first on-yomi ends in つ.
  2. If the second on-yomi already starts with /g/, /z/, /d/, /b/, つ stays “big”. Otherwise, つ → っ.
  3. The second on-yomi stays as it is.

* 吸血鬼 (きゅうけつき) is not affected, for example.

You can have gemination on items that don’t end in つ.
く is probably the second most common. (がく+こう=がっこう)
And there are other exceptions.

苦い(にがい)bitter
若い(わかい)young

My brain likes to say it knows these things and automatically gets my fingers to type them in and smash enter. Thanks, brain. :stuck_out_tongue: