Talk:Mora (linguistics)

message: Re: Another term for "mora" transparent to non-linguists.
Having difficulty explaining why counting syllabets created English haiku that were far longer than Japanese haiku, I found that we needed a new term, similar to "mora" but readable at a glance and far easier to remember. It is "syllabet." So far, I have only found it mentioned (I did get credit) in an article in a haiku magazine called Haijinxs.
"Syllabet" seems an intuitively correct way to describe the letters making up the Japanese syllabary.
Please feel free to use it!
robin d. gill
paraverse.org
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Have revised the page WRT syllable-final consonants. The assumption that a syllable-final C counts as a mora on its own is incorrect, and is probably based on the situation in Japanese. In Japanese, only [n] can appear as a syllable coda, and it is pronounced syllabically, hence it is always a mora in Japanese. However, there's no phonological reason why the English word cat should be analysed as bimoraic. thefamouseccles 13:58 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
:Sure there is. English doesn't allow monomoraic content words like  but it does allow bimoraic content words like . Since  is a word of English it must be bimoraic. --Angr 10:11, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: note that Basho was not as strict about counting 5-7-5 as many modern haiku poets, and I've seen one account that said around 10% of his haiku/hokku deviated from that standard. BlankVerse ∅  17:17, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Admittedly, Bashō is not the best example, because he'd been using lots of jiamari and stuff. Nonetheless, I've been told that Japanese was syllable-timing some time ago, references: http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/message/jpnFHxuIVhkFH_R6rW9.html, http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/message/jpnFI1eqMHFFHy8bLL-.html --FAeR 30 June 2005 14:21 (UTC)
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Can someone please add some examples to this article? As a non-Japanese speaker (and non-professional linguist), I think it would make the subject much easier to understand. matturn 00:41, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Amen to that. Also explain the term better. I have read and re-read this article several times and I still don't understand what "mora" means.DKMell (talk) 19:11, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

message: I know of no earlier use of the term "mora" as a linguistic unit than that by Edward Sapir.  Unless someone knows of an earlier source, perhaps he should be given credit for coining this usage at least.
Ziusudra 21:09, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of the term

message: "Mora" is a Latin term indicating a small delay or duration of time.  This in mind, the plural "moræ" is acceptable.  In addition to "moræ" and "moras", I have seen, in the work of Priebsch for instance, the use of the plural "moren".  This plural seems natural and odd, and I am inclined to believe it comes from Priebsch, or some other German Filolog, introducing the word into English from German (which must have received it from Latin first), rather than Latin, and other, English writers, picking up this plural from him.  Priebsch also suggests the idea of "half-moren" in order to solve certain moren counting inconsistencies.
:Moren is certainly the German plural of Mora, but it would be quite odd to use moren as a plural of mora in English. Angr/talk 12:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moren 

message: The fact that Japanese uses moras for counting beats does not mean Japanese doesn't have syllables. The "syllabic n" can only be found in syllable coda position: [pan] is a possible (and real) word of Japanese, while *[npa] isn't. The "gemination mora" can also only occur in coda position: [patto] is a possible word of Japanese, but *[ppato] isn't. [pan] is "two beats" because it's two moras, and moras are what's counted in Japanese. But Japanese still definitely has syllables. Angr (t • c) 10:34, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Japanese 

message: "the words Tōkyō (to-o-kyo-o とうきょう), Ōsaka (o-o-sa-ka おおさか), and Nagasaki (na-ga-sa-ki ながさき) all have four moras, even though they have two, three, and four syllables, respectively."
This is wrong. All three of these words have four syllables. Fix this junk.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.145.68.29 (talk) 05:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, they don't.  You know the difference between a syllable and a mora, right? — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 05:52, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There has been debate about "Tokyo" as an example over on the Haiku discussion page (and also about the transliteration of the separated morae). The biggest problem, to my mind, is that English-speaking readers pronounce "Tokyo" as three syllables (To-ky-o) and Japanese-speakers saying this is a mispronunciation does not help the clarity. See http://inogolo.com/pronunciation/d291/Tokyo Tesspub (talk) 10:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Incorrect syllable count

message: Could be nice if the symbol µ for mora was mentioned somewhere in the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.52.84.147 (talk) 11:31, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Symbol missing 

message: Is Latin metre effectively an example, with long syllables being two moras long? If so perhaps the article should say something about this. Ben Finn (talk) 11:30, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Latin metre

message: This section is not really useful without transliteration of what I assume is Tamil script. A translation of meaning would also be a polite addition.121.215.167.60 (talk) 00:33, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. Someone should do this for those of us who don't understand the script. Is there a special tag for this? I've been unable to find one. 
Is there a tag marking this page as missing translation/transliteration/transcription? --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 22:28, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added  to the section and listed it at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English#June 24. Huon (talk) 22:56, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent! Thanks a lot! Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 14:32, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tamil 

message: Is it not rather that the syllable onset TOGETHER WITH the syllable nucleus represents at least one mora? --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:16, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  A syllable onset (the first consonant or consonants of the syllable) does not represent any mora. 

message: The article doesn't mention which diphthongs are short in Present English or Old English  --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:22, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  English short diphthongs