The first topic promised in the overview article is the sound of the ha-row. Say these words aloud.
- okoru (get angry) → okorippoi (“irritable”)
- shimeru (get damp) → shimeppoi (“damp-feeling”)
- Satsuma → Satsumappō
Not “-hoi” or “-boi,” but “-poi.” Is this ending originally “hoi”? In “P-on-kō” in Kokugo no tame, Part 2 (1903), Ueda Kazutoshi places these very examples at the center of his argument.
Alone it’s “ha,” in a compound it’s “pa”
Ueda observes: something pronounced in the ha-row (h) when alone always becomes the pa-row (P) once it enters a compound. Okorippoi, shimeppoi, and Satsumappō are the examples.
Ueda reasons out why: that they become pa-row only in compounds suggests that the pronunciation habits of high antiquity remain, as a trace, inside compounds. We follow that old habit without realizing it.
Two possibilities Ueda distinguished
Ueda, however, carefully separates two possibilities.
- (1) An old P sound surviving unchanged inside a compound.
- (2) A word that is a later H sound, but changes to P only in compounds, drawn along by the habit of high antiquity.
That is, he doesn’t claim that examples like okorippoi are all direct survivals of the old P. He says there may also be cases where a word with H turns into P, pulled by an old habit.
The sounds of “pachi-pachi” and “pin-pin”
Ueda points to another familiar fact. P sounds, he says, are easy to pronounce — even an infant under a year old can make them. In Japanese, sound-symbolic words (onomatopoeia) such as pachi-pachi, bara-bara, pishi-pishi, pin-pin, potsu-potsu, and pon-pon use P and B sounds quite ordinarily. And we pronounce and understand them without effort.
So Ueda says: it is rather strange to claim that the ancient Japanese struggled with the pa-row sounds when practicing foreign sounds. Such sounds, he suggests, must have been in Japanese from the start.
The path to the modern ha-row
So how did the ha-row sound change? Ueda reasons that, just as today’s ha hi fu he ho are pronounced moving toward wa ki u e o, the old pa pi pu pe po existed before the Nara period and gradually moved to ha hi fu he ho. Between them he posits a sound like ph, or f.
What this article introduces is Ueda’s inference. How it is assessed in present-day research, we sort out in the verdict article. What evidence Ueda piled up for the conclusion, we read in the close-reading article.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| Observation | Words in the ha-row alone become pa-row in compounds (okorippoi, shimeppoi, Satsumappō) |
| Ueda’s inference | The ha-row was once P, and that habit leaves traces in compounds |
| Two possibilities | A direct survival of old P, or an H word turned P by the old habit |
| Path of change | P → ph/f → H |
In a nutshell — Ueda Kazutoshi thought the “po” of okorippoi was a clue that the ha-row of Japanese was originally a P sound. Its trace remains inside compounds even now.