Rendaku - Sequential Vocalization in the Japanese Language

Have you noticed when a kanji ends up having a reading as if it had dakuten? For example, in the word goddess, why does me [女] + kami [神] become megami [女神] when gami is not a reading of kami [神]? This phenomenon in Japanese is called rendaku and we will talk about it in this article.

We recommend reading first: Dakuten and handakuten – Quotation Marks in Japanese

The word “rendaku” [連濁] means sequential vocalization, euphonic change, or sequential pronunciation. The “rendaku” is a morphophonological phenomenon of the Japanese language that regulates the pronunciation of the initial consonant of the non-initial portions of compound or prefixed words.

In simple terms, “rendaku” is a phenomenon that changes the reading of a hiragana to its “dakuten” version on certain occasions to make pronunciation easier and less confusing. Since there is no “dakuten” in ideograms, it becomes complicated to identify when this phenomenon occurs.

For those who don’t remember, “dakuten” are those 2 dots that look like accents that appear on some hiraganas and katakanas to change their sounds such as: [KA-か = GA-が] [TA-た = DA-だ]…

The word rendaku [連濁] is composed of the ideograms [連] which means to unite, connect, join, link, carry and [濁] which means sonorous, impurity or wrong.

LIST OF RENDAKU WORDS

I mentioned some examples and tried to explain in detail how this phenomenon works. Some may still not have understood, but it becomes easier with some examples below:

Without rendaku	With rendaku
Person – hito – 人	People – hitobito – 人々(this is equivalent to another 人)
Flower – hana – 花	Flower arrangement – ikebana – 生け花
Temple – toki – 時	Sometimes – tokidoki – 時々(are 2x 時)
Paper – Kami – 紙	Origami – 折り紙
Japanese Character – Kana – かな – 仮名	Japanese Alphabet – hiragana – ひらがな
Sushi – 寿司	Type of sushi – makizushi – 巻き寿司
Temple – tera – 寺	Temple in the mountain – yamadera – 山寺
Blood – chi – 血	Nosebleed – hanaji – 鼻血
Fire – hi – 火	Fireworks – hanabi – 花火
Use – tsukai – 使い	Anxiety – kokorodzukai – 心使い
Deep – fukai – 深い	Deep – okubukai – 奥深い
Discount – hiku – 引く	Tax excluded – zeibiku – 税引き
Tooth – ha – 歯	Bucktooth – deppa – 出っ歯
To hate – kirai – 嫌い	Cat hater – nekogirai – 猫嫌い
Photo – shashin – 写真	Blueprint – aojyashin – 青写真
Country – koku – 國	China – Chuugoku – 中国

The examples above are the most popular when we talk about rendaku. Unfortunately, there is no rule for when rendaku is applied to the word; often it is something random, but there are sets of rules that can help you understand how this phenomenon works.

The first thing you need to know is that if you type a word on the keyboard and forget about this phenomenon, the ideograms or kanji will still appear to be selected on the keyboard. This phenomenon is something more phonetic and usually occurs only with kanji.

Most words that use the same kanji twice tend to use rendaku.

There is a list of ideograms that most of the time their composition generates a rendaku. These words are called “rendaku-lovers” and some of them are: 花, 風呂, 寿司, 骨, 笛, and 箱;

When does a word use rendaku?

It is worth remembering that these rules I will mention do not affect your learning of the Japanese language; they serve only to satisfy curiosity. When you learn, for example, the word goddess [女神], you already learn it as “Megami” and not “Mekami,” so knowing or not knowing the rules of rendaku will not change anything in your life.

Fortunately, knowing the rules may or may not help you predict the rendaku in some unknown word. We recommend knowing at least the basics about dakuten and handakuten to understand the little rules created in this article.

Rendaku is most often present in a compound word. That is, when two words come together to form another word. There are exceptions, but practically all words that use this phenomenon:

• Are of Japanese origin;
• Do not have any dakuten or handakuten in the compound word;
• Are not an onomatopoeia;
• The second word starts with K, S, T, or H;

Foreign origin words can have a rendaku as in the case of the word karuta [かるた] which comes from carta and refers to a card game or deck. This exception occurs in the word irohagaruta [いろはがるた]. It only happened because the word karuta was 100% absorbed into Japanese.

The Lyman Law and Lexical Properties

The Lyman Law states that rendaku does not occur if the second consonant of the second element is obstructively vocalized. Or simplifying, it does not happen when the second consonant of the second already contains a dakuten.

Japanese origin words usually do not have two consonants with dakuten. These syllables with accents can also be called murky sound or dakuon [濁音].

The compound word yama [山] + kaji [火事] cannot be pronounced yamagaji because ji [じ] is a dakuon. Other similar words are hitoritabi, tsunotokage, and harukaze.

There are rare cases where the second word is composed of 3 syllables. In some of these cases, the word may have a phenomenon where the dakuten of the second syllable is swapped to the first syllable. Some examples are: [した + つづみ = したづつみ] – [あと + しざり = あとじさり];

Despite many exceptions, words with lexical properties do not usually manifest rendaku. In simple terms, if you see any syllable with dakuten in the first word, it is likely that the consonant of the second kanji will not manifest rendaku. Japanese does not usually have two dakuten syllables in a row.

The compound word mizutama [水玉] remains mizutama because of the zu [ず], unlike akadama [赤玉] which transformed the tama into dama.

Dvandva Semantics and Suffixes

There is a phenomenon in some languages called Dvandva which are compound words but convey the idea of two words as if there were an “and” in between them. In Portuguese, we have the word agridoce which is bitter and sweet or words like espaço-tempo which also fall into the Dvandva category.

When two words come together to form a compound word of the dvandva category, rendaku is not used. There are some exceptions of words that use rendaku, but they are two different words, for example:

• 山川 – yamakawa – Mountains and Rivers;
• 山川 – yamagawa – River of the mountain;

A word that would fit perfectly in rendaku is shiro + kuro [白黒] which could be written shiroguro [白黒], but this does not happen because shirokuro [白黒] means black and white. Meanwhile, the word iro + kuro becomes iroguro [色黒];

Besides onomatopoeias, words that are composed of a suffix or prefix also do not transform into a rendaku. See a list of suffixes below that completely eliminate this phenomenon:

• 一 [hito];
• 下 [shita]
• 二 [futa];
• 先 [saki];
• 唐 [kara];
• 土 [tsuchi];
• 姫 [hime];
• 御 [o, mi];
• 毎 [mai];
• 浜 [hama];
• 潮 [shiyo];
• 煙 [kemuri];
• 片 [kata];
• 白 [shiro];
• 紐 [himo];
• 血 [ketsu]
• 黒 [kuro];

Generally, compound words that contain these ideograms with these readings functioning with a suffix or prefix block the possibility of the word being a rendaku.

These were some of the little rules and tips related to rendaku. We recommend not getting stuck on these rules because there are many exceptions among them. The best thing is to learn word by word without worrying about it.

I hope you enjoyed this article; I tried to simplify it as much as possible.

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