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October 23

Why do these sound changes appear to have not happened consistently?

One feature in the historical development of the Japanese language is the contraction of certain vowel combinations (typically ones where the second vowel is u) into long vowels. For example, the au sequence became a long o sound. However, there are some situations where this did not happen. For example, the verb 会う/あう (au) meaning “meet” did not become おう/ō. Likewise, 買う (かう/kau, “buy”) did not become こう/kō. The au phoneme sequence in the given name of the Ashikaga shogunate’s founder also did not contract to ō. Another category of seemingly inconsistent sound changing is for some godan verbs whose conjunctive (i-stem plus -te/て) and past (i-stem plus -ta/た) forms underwent some changes that resulted in something different from their normal stems, whereas the form that conveys the idea of wanting to do something (i-stem plus -tai/たい) did not. For example, the way to say “want to read” takes the normal stem of 読む and thus comes out as 読みたい and not 読んだい, whereas the conjunctive (読んで) and past (読んだ) use an altered stem appearance. If all three involve the stem and the T-sound, why would two of them exhibit this change while one doesn’t? Primal Groudon (talk) 03:57, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Primal Groudon, the answer to every historical negative in linguistic development is unknowable— or, if you prefer, "just cuz". Concerted effort by a number of regulars at this venue seems to have broken the habit one prolific querant used to have of asking this genre of question. That experience is likely why no one has bothered to respond to this thread over the past four days. Folly Mox (talk) 14:04, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

etymology of the zodiac symbols

Astrological symbol#Signs of the zodiac lists etymologies for the zodiac symbols, but they are unreferenced. Is there a reliable source explaining them? Double sharp (talk) 07:26, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rudolf Koch has a brief discussion in his Book of Signs. Some of them, such as Aquarius, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, are fairly obvious (self-evident). By the way, I'm not sure that "etymology" is the best word to use in this context... AnonMoos (talk) 09:28, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess they are mostly simplified pictograms. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:00, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They have explanations in the individual articles. You could copy appropriate info to the main article. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:29, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]