Having noticed that Harumi tends to lose her "g" sounds in the word omigoto and the name Moriguchi, in the series Shingu, now I'm noticing that a lot of the characters do it.

The word "Shingu", in particular, seems to be bringing that out in a lot of characters. Jiltosh, Isozaki, and Myouken all pronounce it without a hard "g", so that it almost sounds like "Shinu".

Jiltosh and Isozaki do the same thing to "ningen", nearly losing the "g" in that as well. And the name "Asougi" is another giveaway. In the last episode, Myouken and Momoe pronounce it "Asoungi" with the "g" almost imperceptible.

So that's a girl, two women, and two men.

On the other hand, Nayuta says the "g" in "Shingu" strongly, and so does Muryou, that I've noticed so far. That's a girl and a boy.

I wonder what's going on with this? It doesn't seem as if it's accidental. One possibility: The city of Tenmo doesn't exist. They show various views that strongly suggest it's located about where the real city of Odawara is, SW of Tokyo on the coast. But I wonder if they're trying to make the purported location more indistinct by inducing an unexpected accent among those who live there? I don't think that people who actually live in Odawara would do that.

Of course, there's a different possibility. There's a Monty Python episode which is about Queen Bess and her courtiers and all of them swap all their L and R sounds. It turns out they're being directed by a Japanese man, and he's been telling them how they should pronounce everything. Could that actually be what happened here? Maybe the series director, or the voice recording director, has a Tohoku-ben and has been coaching all the seiyuu.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 12:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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