rendaku

Noun. (linguistics) In the Japanese language, a phenomenon which governs the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word. An example is 時々 (ときどき, tokidoki), where the second element "-toki" becomes "-doki" and 折り紙 (おりがみ, origami) where the word 紙 (かみ, kami; paper) becomes "gami".

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This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.