Have you ever noticed when a kanji ends up having a reading as if it had dakuten? For example, in the word "goddess," why does "kami" [神] + "megami" [女] become "megami" [女神] even though "gami" is not a reading of "kami" [神]? This phenomenon in Japanese is called rendaku, and we will talk about it in this article.
We recommend reading before: Dakuten and handakuten – Japanese quotes
The word "rendaku" [連濁] means sequential vocalization, euphonic change, or sequential pronunciation. "Rendaku" is a morphophonological phenomenon of the Japanese language that regulates the pronunciation of the initial consonant of non-initial portions of compound or prefixed words.
Simply put, "rendaku is a phenomenon that changes the reading of a hiragana to its "dakuten" version in certain occasions to make pronunciation easier and less confusing. Since there are no "dakuten" in ideograms, it is difficult to identify when this phenomenon occurs.
For those of you who don't remember, “dakuten” are those 2 dots that look like accents on some hiragana and katakana to transform their sounds, for example: [KA-か = GA-が] [TA-た = DA-だ]...
The word rendaku [連濁] is composed of the characters [連] which means to unite, connect, join, bind, take and [濁] which means sound, impurity or wrong.
Table of Content
LIST OF WORDS RENDAKU
I cited some examples and tried to explain in detail how this phenomenon works. Some may not have understood it yet, but it's easy with some examples below:
| without income | with rendaku |
| Person - 人 | People - hitobito - 人々 (this is equivalent to another 人) |
| Flower - hana - 花 | Flower arrangement - ikebana - 生け花 |
| Temple - toki - 時 | Sometimes - tokidoki - 時々(that's 2x 時) |
| Paper - Kami - 紙 | Origami - 折り紙 |
| Japanese Character - Kana - かな - 仮名 | Japanese Alphabet - hiragana - ひらがな |
| Sushi - 寿司 | Type of sushi - makizushi - 巻き寿司 |
| Temple - tera - 寺 | Temple on the mountain - yamadera - 山寺 |
| Blood - chi - 血 | Nasal bleeding - hanaji - 鼻血 |
| Fogo - hi - 火 | Fireworks - hanabi - 花火 |
| Usar - tsukai - 使い | Anxiety - kokorodzukai - 心使い |
| Deep - fukai - 深い | Profundo - deep - 奥深い |
| Discount - hiku - 引く | Tax excluded - zeibiku - 税引き |
| Tooth - ha - 歯 | Crooked Tooth - deppa - 出っ歯 |
| Odiar - kirai - 嫌い | Cat hater - nekogirai - 猫嫌い |
| Foto - shashin - 写真 | Blueprint - aojyashin - 青写真 |
| Country - koku - 國 | China - Chuugoku - 中国 |
The examples above are the most popular when it comes to rendaku. Unfortunately there is no rule for when rendaku is applied to the word, it is often random, but there are sets of rules that can make it easier for you to understand how this phenomenon works.
The first thing you need to know is that if you write a word on the keyboard and forget about this phenomenon, the ideograms or kanji will still appear to be selected on the keyboard. This phenomenon is something more phonetic and happens most of the time with only kanji.
Most words that use the same kanji twice usually use rendaku.
There is a list of ideograms that most often generate a rendaku. These words are called "rendaku-lovers" and some of them are: 花, 風呂, 寿司, 骨, 笛, and 箱;
When does a word use rendaku?
It is worth remembering that these rules that I will mention do not affect your learning of the Japanese language, they only serve to satisfy curiosity. When you learn, for example, the word goddess [女神], you already learn it as "Megami" and not "Mekami", so knowing or not knowing the rendaku rules will not change anything in your life.
Fortunately knowing the rules may or may not help you predict the rendaku in some unfamiliar word. We recommend knowing at least the basics of dakuten and handakuten to understand the rules created in this article.
Rendaku is most often present in a compound word. That is, when two words come together to form another word. There are exceptions, but pretty much every word that uses this phenomenon:
- They are of Japanese origin;
- There are no dakuten or handakuten in the compound word;
- It is not an onomatopoeia;
- The second word starts with K, S, T or H.
Words of foreign origin can have a rendaku as in the case of the word karuta [かるた] which comes from card and refers to a game of cards or cards. This exception happens in the word irohagaruta [いろはがるた]. It just happened because the word karuta was 100% absorbed into Japanese.
Lyman's law and lexical properties
The Lyman's Law states that rendaku does not occur if the second consonant of the second element is vocally-occlusive. Or simply put, it does not happen when the second consonant of the second element already contains a dakuten
Words of Japanese origin do not usually have two consonants with dakuten. These syllables with the accents can also be called voiced sound or dakuon [濁音].
The compound word yama [山] + kaji [火事] cannot be pronounced as yamagaji because ji [じ] is a dakuten. Other similar words are hitoritabi, tsunotokage, and harukaze.
There are rare cases where the second word is composed of 3 syllables. In some of these cases, the word may undergo a phenomenon where the dakuten of the second syllable is changed to the first syllable. Some examples are: [した + つづみ = したづつみ] - [あと + しざり = あとじさり];
Despite many exceptions, words with lexical properties usually do not show rendaku. In simple terms, if you see a syllable with dakuten in the first word, it is likely that the consonant of the second kanji does not show rendaku. Japanese does not usually have two dakuten syllables next to each other.
The compound word mizutama [水玉] remains mizutama because of the zu [ず], unlike akadama [赤玉] which changed the tama to dama.
Dvandva semantics and suffixes
There is a phenomenon in some languages called Dvandva which are compound words but convey the idea of two words as if there was an "and" between them. In Portuguese, we have the word "agridoce" which means bitter and sweet, or words like "espaço-tempo" which also fall into the Dvandva category.
When two words come together to form a compound word of the dvandva category, the rendaku is not used. There are some exceptions of words that use rendaku, but they are two different words, for example:
- 山川 - yamakawa - Mountains and Rivers;
- 山川 - yamagawa - River of the mountain;
One word that would fit perfectly in rendaku is shiro + kuro [白黒] which could be written as shiroguro [白黒], but that doesn't happen because shirokuro [白黒] means black and white. On the other hand, the word iro + kuro becomes iroguro [色黒];
In addition to onomatopoeias, words that are composed of a suffix or prefix also do not transform into a rendaku. See a list of suffixes below that completely kills this phenomenon:
- 一 [hito];
- 下 [shita]
- 二 [futa];
- 先 [saki];
- 唐 [kara];
- 土 [tsuchi];
- 姫 [hime];
- 御 [o, mi];
- 毎 [mai];
- 浜 [hama];
- 潮 [shiyo];
- 煙 [kemuri];
- 片 [kata];
- 白 [shiro];
- 紐 [himo];
- 血 [ketsu]
- 黒 [kuro];
Usually the compound words that contain these ideograms with these readings working with a suffix or prefix block the possibility of the word being a rendaku.
These were some of the rules and tips related to rendaku. We recommend not being bound by these rules, because there are many exceptions among them. It is best to learn word for word without worrying about it.
I hope you enjoyed this article, I tried to simplify it as much as possible.