Jabberwocky in Japanese

A recurrent theme in this series has been the phonosemantic nature of the Japanese language. To put it simply, how it associates sounds with ideas. For example, in one post we found that the “k” sound has to do with curves.

This particular type of phonosemantics has been given a name by the linguists: phonoestheme. Here the “estheme” part refers to perception. So:

A phonoestheme is a phonetic unit associated with a perceptual unit.

We have seen many, many examples of this in our journey so far. To take just one example, in Japanese the phonestheme ak- is associated with being red, bright, and/or clear—赤い/akai/red, 明るい/akarui/bright, and 明らか/akiraka/clear.

Now phonoesthemes are not the only pattern for sounds to be related to ideas. They are just one case of certain sounds or sound patterns evoking particular meanings or associations. They are distinct from, albeit related to, what are called “ideophones”, the generalized term for onomatopoeia, which can be broken down into

• onomatopeia (擬音語/giongo) for non-animate sounds, or 擬声語/giseigo for animate sounds like wanwan for dogs barking

• psychomime (擬情語/gijōgo), for sensations and psychological states, as in iraira

• phenomime (擬態語/gitaigo) for phenomenon—think ギザギザ

Quick: can you think of words which fall into multiple of these categories? How about どんどん/dondon, which could be either the sound of a drum (擬音語), or someone making rapid progress in learning Japanese (擬態語)?

Phonoesthemes, on the other hand, relate sounds to ideas less directly, by suggesting certain ideas or qualities. Both forms of sound symbolism—ideophones and phonoesthemes—are omnipresent in Japanese. Although sound symbolism is found in many languages, it is a central organizing principle in Japanese.

(In a previous post, we referred to phonoesthemes with the invented term “phonosememe”. That’s incorrect, and reflected an incomplete understanding of the word “sememe”, which is defined as an atomic element of meaning, like, say a “dog” or “ing”. The ideas pointed to by phonoesthemes, like “red/bright/clear”, are broader than sememes; they are broad categories of related meanings. My apologies.)

Some phonoesthemes appear to cross language barriers. For example, one study showed that words starting in “fl-” were associated with fluidity by speakers of four different languages, although they were all Indo-European. And of course there is famous bouba/kiki study which showed both English and Tamil speakers associating “bouba” with curvy shapes and “kiki” with jagged ones. But I see little sign of phonoesthemes shared between Japanese and English. I have a vague suspicion that Japanese may share some phonoesthemes with Korean, but don’t know enough of that language to say for sure.

Jabberwocky

Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky is considered a classic example of sound symbolism in English. We sort of know what the made-up words mean based just on their sounds—the essence of sound symbolism:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

So how would we replicate this—whether or not to call this “translating” depends on your definition of that word—into Japanese? Whatever you do, don’t do this:

Here’s an attempt by Noriko Watanabe¹, a translator of children’s books:

Buririggu deshita. Suraibi tōbu
Wēbu de gairu to gimburu shite,
Nante mimuji na borogōbu,
Mōmu rassu autoguraibimashita ne.

Ouch. This was the “work” of a translator of children’s books named Noriko Watanabe, who it’s fair to say has never heard of or even thought about sound symbolism.

Doing a good job here is going to require lots of introspective thinking about phonoesthemes in English vs. Japanese. Take “brillig”. The sound “br-”, along with the position in the sentence, gives the impression of “brightness” or “brilliance”; on the other hand, the “lig” part sounds a bit like "it might involve “light”. So one might choose the Japanese word mabayakara. We’ll have to ask a native Japanese speaker what this brings to mind.

Here’s a remarkable translation by Yagawa Sumiko (矢川澄子) the noted 20th century author:

ゆうまだきらら　しなねばトオヴ
まわるかのうち　じゃいってきりる
いとかよわれの　おんボロゴオヴ
までたるラアス　ほさめすりつつ

And one by Sawasaki Junnokai, in which he does some amazing wordplay with kanji too:

夕火（あぶり）の刻、粘滑（ねばらか）なるトーヴ
遥場（はるば）にありて回儀（まわりふるま）い錐穿（きりうが）つ。
総て弱ぼらしきはボロゴーヴ、
かくて郷遠（さととお）しラースのうずめき叫ばん。

My goodness.

1. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/found-in-translation/