ENGLISH VS TWO ORIENTAL LANGUAGES

Taking a slightly different direction than my other essays on the English language with this post. Back when I was a teenager, I learned that Japanese, like English, is stress dependent. This lesson came from a Japanese speaking actor performing the play Kataki at the community theater where I attended Drama lessons.

Everyone at the theater was pronouncing the play title as “ka-TAH-i” or “ka-TACK-i.” The Japanese actor informed us the proper pronunciation was “KAH-tah-ki.” But just yesterday, I learned Japanese is also pitch dependent like Chinese. In other words, the same written word (characters/script) when pronounced with not only stress, but pitch change, will have more than one definition.

I should have realized this before as I have long known that Chinese has this characteristic, and the two languages share a linguistic string. But what I found most interesting is that the author of the post explained there is a possible way to write a word to indicate the pitch variant, and therefore the true meaning intended. However, it is also possible that the word’s connotation will vary depending on how the word is used—something common to most languages.

Ignoring connotation for a moment, I have to say never have I been happier to know that English meanings change primarily due to where the stress is place on the word. Example from an earlier post*, CON-test is a competition, but con-TEST is the action of vying to win that CON-test.

However, English speakers manage to even make the simplicity of this complicated. Americans pronounced the word dedicated as DED-i-ca-ted, while our English cousins will say ded-i-CA-ted (long A). If the speaker is from India, the word might or might not mimic the English pronunciation. And so it goes, around the globe. Just imagine what would happen if English, like Japanese or Chinese, were also pitch dependent. Horrors!

*For the full text of the February 27, 2023 post, see:

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