>How is a "syllable" defined in Japanese language? If haiku is very old,
>a.t.P., weren't the "characters" more like pictures than letters,
>characters, syllables as we know them in our languages? In that case,
>what is the equation between a Japanese "character" and a syllable
>as we know it?
Executive summary: I will try to answer this with the limited exposure I
have to Japanese.
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Japanese use four character scripts:
1. katAkana
2. heerAgana
3. kAnji
4. Roman
Roman is used to write some technical words like RS/232, CCITT etc.
katAkana and heerAgana are phonetic scripts, however some sounds
simply dont exist. example: "la" is not there. So Bill Clinton is pronounced
as "birru krintanu". Likewise all vowels dont exist. They have
"a","i","u","e","o" only. This order is because, vaLLa ka-guNintAlu
"ka","ki","ku","ke","ko" ani caduvutAru. Also, some some guNintAlu are
not there for some characters. e.g.: "ti" does not exist. So, Navratilova
becomes Navrachilova.
(Incidentally most Japanese words end in a vowel. And you find very
few instances of samyuktaaksharam.)
Why two phonetic scripts ? heeragana is used to write Japanese
words only. No foreign word can be written in heerAgana. Apparently,
up until recently women were not allowed to write using heerAgana.
This does not make sense to me. How did they write then ? I dont know.
katAkana is exclusively used to write foreign words. anTE, "chando
ingleeshu kavula kOsam anna mATa". :-)
So looking at the script you can distinguish native and foreign words.
kAnji is used to write words borrowed from Chinese. This is interesting.
kAnji is what we all know as the pictorial script. ( A high school student
in Japan has to know about 800 symbols; a master - about 4000
symbols). For example, the idea of center and middle is conveyed by a
rectangle with a vertical line cutting it in the middle. This kAnji character is
pronounced as "naka" in Japanese. The same symbol is pronounced
differently in chinese languages (mandarin/kantonese) but understood as
the same content.
I am given to believe that Chinese verbs cannot be conjugated.
(Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of Chinese). So, when Japanese import
Chinese words, they have to supplement the pictorial symbol with
heerAgana characters to convey conjugation.
In short, I think it is not possible to delineate syllables from written
Japanese. However, it is possible to recognize the symbols with
whitespace boundaries around them. That symbol could be a kAnji
character standing for a word (of SEVERAL syllables), or
katAkana/heerAgana character which is ONE syllable.
Regards
Madan