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Can one differentiate by pronunciation between [父]{ちち} and [乳]{ちち} (as for 雨 and 飴)?

If not, does anyone have a reasonable explanation for why 父 and 乳 have the same pronunciation? It seems unlikely that they stem from the same word, which was assigned two different characters, when 漢字 were imported from China...

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Often a man becomes a 父 because of 乳. – istrasci Aug 30 '12 at 14:09
+1 I found this puzzling, as it's the the 母 that has 乳. But I thought it'd be safer to ask on lang-8 instead of JLU. lang-8.com/424295/journals/1590094 On that site, KimuraShinichi makes some interesting claims, but I don't know how accurate they are. – Andrew Grimm Aug 30 '12 at 23:19
@istrasci san, "Often a man becomes a 父 because of 乳" ってどゆ意味？ – Chocolate Apr 21 at 0:50
@Chocolate san: 明らかのじゃない？ちょっとも考えとったらわかると思う。冗談なんだ。 – istrasci Apr 21 at 20:55
@istrasci あ、やっぱり・・・しもねた？えっちなこと？ – Chocolate Apr 21 at 21:14

3 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

父 and 乳 cannot be differentiated by pronunciation (including accentation).

While the word titi "father" is attested in Old Japanese (8th century), titi "breasts" is not extant until the 17th century. However, it is more complicated than that. titi "breasts" is a reduplication of ti "breasts" which is extant in OJ. Also, titi "father" seems to be a reduplication of ti, a suffix attached to men. This can be seen in ooZI, hikoZI, and maro ga TI. The last one hints that ti may function as "father" on its own as well.

One possible motivation for ti > titi "father" is due to regularization with haha "mother", which repeats the same syllable twice. The ultimate etymology of both ti are unknown. Perhaps ti "father" is related to ti "blood" (血) as in what links a family. Other speculation is possible.

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Thanks for your answer. What suffix are you talking about? Could you write ooZI, hikoZI and marogaTI with 漢字. I am guessing hiko is 彦 (and oo 大?), but I am not sure of the others... – user1205935 Aug 30 '12 at 11:53
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The suffix ti which is found in male words. Three examples are ooZI (voiced), hikoZI (voiced), and maro ga TI. Following are the spellings given in the original (texts). ooZI: 於保知 (新撰字鏡), 於保遅 (令集解) hikoZI: 比古遅 (古事記), marogaTI: 麻呂賀知 (古事記). – Dono Aug 30 '12 at 12:13
Hmmm, they look like 万葉仮名 to me. Must be ROJ (really old Japanese :) ). Thank you! – user1205935 Aug 30 '12 at 12:36
I was also just informed that the ち of 乳 may also come from 血, as the breast milk is part of the blood circulation (albeit being white, not red)... So maybe the two words are related after all. – user1205935 Aug 30 '12 at 12:42
Did ち used to sound like "ti"? So the slang for breasts used to sound like the English slang for nipple? – Andrew Grimm Aug 30 '12 at 23:25
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up vote 0 down vote

The pronunciation is the same, so no, you cannot differentiate it from there. Context is the key in this case, and in many other cases.

The fact is that Japanese is a language with only a few sounds at its disposal, so homophones are to be expected. This is especially true considering that Japanese works with syllables, while other languages work with single letters, and this allows more combinations, because consonants are not necessarily attached to vowels: Japanese cannot have consonant clusters.

Things like br, pr, etc, are achieved by using the う (U) vowel, which is half-muted, and it makes the syllables look (and above all, sound) like consonant clusters.

I don't know about the etymology since I cannot understand Japanese well and I don't think I could check an Etymology dictionary... Unless there are in English.

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I know what you're trying to say, but tr is a rather bad example for a half-muted (devoiced) "u". ;) – Martin Sojka Aug 31 '12 at 13:22
@MartinSojka Why would that be the case? – Alenanno Aug 31 '12 at 13:25
... because of how you pronounce つる. – Martin Sojka Aug 31 '12 at 13:29
@MartinSojka What a bad mistake. I totally forgot about that. -.- Thanks, fixed. – Alenanno Aug 31 '12 at 13:30
Uhm, is there a reason for this downvote? I don't see any mistakes. – Alenanno Sep 2 '12 at 14:46
up vote 2 down vote

If not, does anyone have a reasonable explanation for why 父 and 乳 have the same pronunciation

I do have one: the relatively limited number of words than can be made from composing the sounds of kanas. You are doomed to have either a lot of homophones, or a lot of very long words… I believe that evolution led to having shorter words with collisions rather than extra long words…

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Notice that, in English for example, you even have homophones with opposite meanings (eg, "to raise/raze a building"). There must be some in Japanese as well, but can't think of any. – Axioplase Aug 30 '12 at 7:19
So, your answer is "coincidence". – user1205935 Aug 30 '12 at 8:34
Well, "evolution-driven coincidence" yes. – Axioplase Aug 30 '12 at 9:03

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