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Old 04-09-2005, 01:12 AM   #1
arjandevries
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Bokken or boken

What is it? Bokken or boken or both?

If both; why?

Arjan
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Old 04-09-2005, 01:33 AM   #2
Mashu
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Re: Bokken or boken

It is bokken ぼっけん 木剣.

Boken is something else entirely.
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Old 04-09-2005, 02:51 AM   #3
arjandevries
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Re: Bokken or boken

Quote:
Matthew Zsebik wrote:
It is bokken ぼっけん 木剣.

Boken is something else entirely.

OK but when you Google boken aikido you get 12700 hits.
When you google bokken aikido you get 69000 hits which of course is much more but it still leaves it open for discussion don't you agree?

Arjan
(what in your opinion is boken?)
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Old 04-09-2005, 03:35 AM   #4
Mashu
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Re: Bokken or boken

I'm pretty sure it's bokken.

Quote:
In Japanese there are sounds expressed by double consonants "kk", "pp", "ss", and "tt". These sounds are pronounced like "glottal stops" or putting some pause after the preceding syllable. These sounds are counted as one "mora" (a Japanese syllabic rhythm). For instance, "kitte" can be divided into three moras "ki-t-te". It is often observed that the double consonants are often pronounced unaspirated
Bokken (wooden sword) is one of these types of words. In romaji you use a double consonant like it says above. With hiragana you put a small tsu つ between ぼ and  けん.

Quote:
OK but when you Google boken aikido you get 12700 hits.
When you google bokken aikido you get 69000 hits which of course is much more but it still leaves it open for discussion don't you agree?
No

Quote:
(what in your opinion is boken?)
Opinion? So far I have only found 母権 for boken which means something like matriarchy or maternal rights according to my Random House dictionary by Seigo Nakao.

That's the story I'm going with.
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Old 04-09-2005, 03:59 AM   #5
arjandevries
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Re: Bokken or boken

Thanks for your answer!

Arjan
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Old 04-09-2005, 04:08 AM   #6
Mashu
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Re: Bokken or boken

Graag gedaan? (It's a pleasure)


Best regards,

Matthew
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Old 04-09-2005, 05:40 AM   #7
arjandevries
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Re: Bokken or boken

Quote:
Matthew Zsebik wrote:
Graag gedaan? (It's a pleasure)


Best regards,

Matthew

Wauw! Impressive Dutch!

Arjan
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Old 04-09-2005, 06:39 AM   #8
Peter Goldsbury
 
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Re: Bokken or boken

Hello Arjan,

The other word for bokken is bokutou (--"). Here there is no glottal stop because the second kanji is different. 'Bokuken' probably became 'bokken' automatically, just as 'kaminagara-no-michi' (another word for shinto) became 'kannagara no michi'. However, for non-Japanese speakers, who do not have other similar words to think about, it is probably even easier to pronounce it 'boken', without the double 'k', but Japanese native speakers have not reached this stage yet.

In bokken, the 'o' is short. The other meaning for 'boken', as an earlier poster stated, combimes 'mother' and 'authority' ꌠ. If you lengthen the vowel, you get --`, which means adventure.

However, as I suggested above, I have never heard a Japanese native speaker pronounce 'bokken' (wooden sword) as 'boken'.

Best regards,

P A Goldsbury
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Old 04-09-2005, 08:25 AM   #9
arjandevries
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Re: Bokken or boken

Thank you Peter Sensei.
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Old 04-10-2005, 03:47 AM   #10
Zoli Elo
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Re: Bokken or boken

Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote:
The other word for bokken is bokutou (--").
I thought that to romanji was bokuto... Learn something new...
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Old 06-26-2005, 11:56 AM   #11
saltlakeaiki
 
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Re: Bokken or boken

To give another angle on the explanation of this: the reason why the pronunciation of this word gets confused by English speakers is that English doesn't have "contrastive consonant doubling", whereas Japanese does. In other words, a word romanized as "boken" and one romanized as "bokken", apart from being pronounced differently, can never be the same word, because a single k and a double k are different.

In English, although "matter" is spelled with two t's and "crater" is spelled with one, the pronunciation of the "t" sound is exactly the same in both. In other words, the spelling is a historical artifact which is unrelated to the phonology (at least in modern English) of these words. It may have been the case at an earlier stage in English that the pronunciation of "t" and "tt" were different, but no longer.
Quote:
Zoli Elo wrote:
I thought that to romanji was bokuto... Learn something new...
Japanese also has contrastive vowel length So the "o" sound in this "to" is a long one, which is often romanized as "ou". Unfortunately, the way words are usually romanized, there's often no way to know which vowels are long and which are short unless you know the language.

Dave

If it wasn't for the goat, you couldn't get in here for propaganda!
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