2

This is from a subs2srs anki deck that I'm studying.

(Edit: Audio on soundcloud )

The original transcription and translation is:

付け忘れんな # Don't forget to record it.

But it sounds to me like:

付け忘れんなぁ{hllhh} or maybe 付け忘れんなぁ{hhlhh}

My ability to hear pitch accents is not great, so I tried to confirm it with VoceVista. Top is start of clip. Right side is higher pitch. The first blue line is the start of the れ syllable. The second is the start of the な. The third is the end of the clip. Audio pitch spectrum

I've read Is the word 「やんな」positive or negative? but the pitch accents, if I'm getting them right, don't seem to match, and the long なぁ is also different. Again, assuming I'm hearing and understanding that right, which is not certain.

So what is going on here?

Taking a stab in the dark, I'm guessing that the ん functions as a contraction of るな, which seems consistent with the falling pitch, and then the なぁ is the confirmation seeking version of the な particle that is sometimes pronounced long.

I can't find anything online to confirm this intuition though...

Improve this question
New contributor
Magnus Lidbom is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering. Check out our Code of Conduct.
2
  • I guess ふざけんな is an example of the same phenomenon, and subject to the same analysis. Your theory is pretty much what I would come up with, too.
    – Karl Knechtel
    Sep 16 at 4:06
  • Thanks, but in most examples I can find, where the audio is clear enough for me to tell, the pitch drops sharply on the な in ふざけんな rather than rise as in this case tinyurl.com/ylje4x4t
    – Magnus Lidbom
    Sep 16 at 4:54

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

It's not a direct answer, but it is a problem on "intonation", the changes in pitch not affecting meaning of words unlike the accent.

Despite the discussion on the godan verb やる, つけ忘れんな is always negative as it is ichidan verb. やるな{LHL} and やりな{LHH} can be realized as やんな{LHL} and やんな{LHH} keeping their accent and number of morae. However, つけ{LH}忘れな{HHH} (verb つけ忘れる in 連用形 + perticle な) and つけ{LH}忘れるな{HHLL} (verb つけ忘れる in 終止形 + perticle な) have different number of morae, and only the latter can be realized つけ忘れんな in colloquial speech. The accent is still つけ{LH}忘れんな{HHLL}.

As another possibility, just based on the text つけ忘れんな, it can be seen as the combination of verb つけ忘れる in 未然形 + aux verb ぬ (negation) in 終止形 + particle な (emotionality), because the auxiliary verb ぬ is often realized as ん. Also in this case, the accent is つけ{LH}忘れんな{HHLL}. (Yet this sounds like monolog and not likely here.)

What I want to say here is that な is gramatically still a particle of prohibition, but its length and pitch are affected by the intonation and other elements.

Improve this answer
New contributor
rk03 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering. Check out our Code of Conduct.
2
  • Thanks. I assume the [] characters mark pitch changes. There's simple built in support for marking those up though in this forum that works quite well, resulting in the red lines from my question. Instructions here: japanese.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/403/…
    – Magnus Lidbom
    Sep 17 at 7:20
  • Thank you for the information! I've just updated.
    – rk03
    Sep 17 at 7:28

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .