"Mad Cow" disease has made its way to Canada, and I recently read an article saying that we, in the U.S., may be hit by the tsunami of Mad Cow Disease. What a wonderful word! However, I must say that I looked at all the definitions in Onelook and didn't find a dictionary that discussed the general meaning of "disaster" that is implied in the use I saw.

There are very few words that come from Japan, and this is one of them. It is a huge destructive wave, usually following an earthquake and can be incorrectly called a tidal wave.

The Tsunami FAQ page tells, among other things, that the word is from Japanese tsu harbor + nami wave.

We are talking about waves which, when the compress upon hitting the shallows near shore, can rise as high as 100 feet.

The word was used twice in today's USA Today newspaper, each time figuratively:

Regarding the expected shoe-endorsement contract for a star basketball player:

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Vaccaro "suspects" the 18-year-old will get more than $100 million in a seven- to 10-year deal — "the greatest endorsement contract ever written." The publicity tsunami that will wash over James' deal will partially offset the costs of signing him.

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Regarding the paper's selection of summer reading:

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Hillary Clinton's Living History arrives June 9 and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix detonates June 21. After weeks of reading and wading through mountains of new releases, we found some books too compelling to be lost in the undertow of the Harry/Hillary tsunami.

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How strange! I've not come across a figurative use of tsunami before - to me, if they're not taling about big waves, I don't expect to see the word tsunami appear.

Conversely I have seen "tidal wave" used figuratively, which is almost the same thing...

Isn't the English language fun?

Actually, I was wrong. Of the 22 dictionaries in Onelook that define tsunami, 1 of them, the Dictionary of Symbolism, defines it as we are seeing it being used in newspapers:

"Viewed as a disturbance in the OCEAN, a tsunami can be symbolic of life’s disturbances, of events which disrupt life in general.

Additionally, when viewed as a force of the OCEAN which causes destruction and chaos, tsunamis can be symbolic of events in life which cause distress and loss."

quote:

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
(A tsunami) is a huge destructive wave, usually following an earthquake and can be incorrectly called a _tidal wave_.

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The stress there is on the word "Incorrectly." A "tidal wave" is nothing more than the gentle lapping of water back and forth as the tide is either coming in or going out. Each incoming rush of water is an individual "tidal wave," not to be confused with those disastrous walls of water which used to level Tokyo on such a regular basis in poorly made Japanese monster movies from the 1950's.

To illustrate this fact, I once stood by the shoreline in ankle-deep water and screamed "TIDAL WAVE!!" each time the H2O swept over my tootsies. After some 15 or 20 minutes of presenting this vocabulary lesson, local authorities asked me to leave the beach claiming that I was jarring the sensibilities of some of the children present. My response that most children could do with a good linguistic jarring fell on deaf ears. Ah, well...


The life of a pedant, alas, is not an easy one.

with so much pedantic warfare to be won to be won, the pedantic's lot is not a happy one

[This message was edited by jerry thomas on Tue May 27th, 2003 at 13:50.]

Reviving a thread...

I read this in our Chicago Tribune this morning and thought it appropriate for this thread where we discussed "tsunami:"

"Tsunami is a powerful word, a word often used in metaphors for great and uncontrollable forces in politics, sports and other venues. On Sunday the world saw just how great and uncontrollable a tsunami is, not as a metaphor but as an event of nature. And in the days and weeks ahead we'll see another force, one perhaps more easily controlled, but powerful nonetheless: That's the force of human compassion, human drive, human will to rebuild."

Kalleh, I was thinking of posting something about this word myself, but you beat me to it!

While watching news on a satellite station out of Beijing, the speaker pronounced the "T" but not the "S." Later I heard someone on NPR saying "TSU-nami," which I assume is the correct pronunciation, whereas we commonly hear "Soo-nami." Who here speaks Japanese and can set me straight on this?

Yes, the Japanese is /tunami/, pronounced [tsunami]. I find initial [ts] easy to say, so I pronounce it in the English words tsunami, tsar, tsetse, but most English-speakers can't say it there, and substitute [s].

Japanese ideograms (I think that's the right word) were romanized to make it easier for the English-speaking world to understand. There are three main systems of romaji (romanized Japanese): Nihon-shiki, Kunrei-shiki and the Hepburn System. Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki are based on Japanese phonology, whereas the Hepburn System is based on English phonology. Tunami in Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki is tsunami in the Hepburn System. The word is pronounced the same in both systems, and the t is vocalized. Most English-speaking people probably think the t is supposed to be silent and they don't pronounce it. Those who use the Kunrei-shiki (tunami) but don't understand Japanese leave out the s sound.


The modified Hepburn System is probably the most taught and offers some advantages in pronunciation. The Kunrei-shiki, based on Japanese phonology, is preferred by linguists because it better illustrates Japanese grammar.

Tinman

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tinman,

aput or Tinman,

Can you write out exactly how it should be pronounced? How does the /ts/ phoneme sound in Japan?

It's pronounced [tsunami] (with the distinctive Japanese form of [u], which doesn't concern us).

It's a /t/ phoneme, that is it belongs to the same set as the first consonant in /ta/, /te/, and /to/. But in the group /tu/ the /t/ is pronounced as a [ts] instead of a plain [t]. The precise sound is [ts] as in 'cats'.

It should be noticed that Kunrei Siki is romanized with a si and not a shi for the same reasons. Also, to complete the five consonant vowel combinations for the ta-series, ti would be pronounced as chi as in cheese. I also notice that one of tidal wave's few meanings is tsunami (that's the English spelling and not the Japanese). That's by common usage and in the dictionary. Sigh.

* out of corner of mouth * I was trying not to mention /ti/... if /ti/ it is, rather than /tji/ or if we're going to take this phoneme theory to its logical conclusion /tje/.

* shtumm *

So, aput, does that hold for /zi/ also? /zji/ ~ [ʤi]? And I purposely did not bring up [h] ~ [ɸ] and [p]. There's some information on Wikipedia.

aside...

/tu/ = [tsu] and /hu/ = [φu] are just straightforward conditioned allophones - we can ignore them.

Each consonant (except /w/) has a plain and a palatalized form, which I'll denote [Cj] though the details of realization vary. The plain can occur before /e a o u/, the palatalized before /i a o u/. A phoneme approach to this could say that there there were only four vowels, and [Cji] is /Cje/.

Of course you can have initial and postvocalic [ i ] and [e] too (and they contrast), but as [j] can only occur in [ja jo ju], it would be neat if you could analyse bare [ i ] as /je/.

The kana write them as if /Ca Ce Ci Co Cu Cja Cjo Cju/, but in all cases /Ci/ is [Cji].

Another reason not to rely on the phoneme theory.

Yeah, I was gonna say that!

Yeah, I was gonna say that!

Me, too, Bob!

I read some statistics yesterday that shocked me. All major natural disasters in the last century were in Asia:

1931 - flood - China (1 million deaths)
1970 - cyclone - Bangladesh (300,000 deaths)
1976 - earthquake - China (290,000 deaths)
1923 - earthquake - Japan (142,807 deaths)
1991 - cyclone - Bangladesh (110,000 deaths)
1988 - earthquake - Armenia (55,000 deaths)
1935 - earthquake - India (50,000 deaths)
1990 - earthquake - Iran (50,000 deaths)
2003 - earthquake - Iran (41,000 deaths)
1942 - hurricane - India (40,000 deaths)

Would we really call it a "hurricane" in India? Shu questioned that, and Dictionary.com defines "hurricane" as: "A severe tropical cyclone originating in the equatorial regions of the Atlantic Ocean or Caribbean Sea or eastern regions of the Pacific Ocean, traveling north, northwest, or northeast from its point of origin, and usually involving heavy rains." We have always thought of hurricanes as occurring in the Carribean areas, as the definition says.

While the terms "earthquakes" and "tornadoes" seem to be used worldwide (depending, of course, on the language), aren't there other weather terms (such as "hurricane") that are used for certain areas of the world? For example, "cyclone," seems to be used for those storms in the southwestern Pacific Ocean or Indian Ocean. I haven't heard of tsunamis occurring around here, though the dictionary doesn't seem to put those in a particular area of the world. Would you call it a "hurricane" in India? If not, what would you have called it?

Yeah, I was gonna say that!

The best way to get somebody to listen to what you're saying is still to whisper.

Thank you, aput and jheem... God forbid you should call me and hear me pronounce any of those sounds and still sound halfway intelligent.

But I'm aware, and I'm listening... God help Indonesia and Thailand and Sri Lanka... I think the survivors are worse off than the ones swept away. Too sad.

quote:

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Originally posted by jheem:
I also notice that one of tidal wave's few meanings is tsunami (that's the English spelling and not the Japanese). That's by common usage and in the dictionary. Sigh.

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Actually, the Japanese is つなみ or 津波. And since tsunami is an English word, why shouldn't it be in the dictionary?

Tinman

And since tsunami is an English word, why shouldn't it be in the dictionary?

Sigh, I was being a teeny bit sarky.

Sarky; that's a new word for me. I felt a little foolish after I looked it up and saw it meant sarcastic. That's so obvious I should have realized it. Is that just Brit-speak, or is it used elsewhere?

Getting back to tsunami vs. tunami. I have a Japanese friend who's been in the States since the 1980's. I showed her both spellings of the word, expecting her to explain that they represented two different sytems of romaji and expressing a preference for one or the other. But I was surprised that when she stated unequivocally that tunami was wrong! She said it made no sense because it would be pronounced two-na-mi. I told her that they were both correct spellings under different systems of romaji, but she didn't believe me. Her friend (also Japanese), who had been in the States just a few months, said both are correct.

I'm not trying to start an argument. I recognize the value in both systems. This article talks about some of the problems caused by having so many different systems of romaji.

Tinman

This is someone who's been exposed to English for too long. This is not how it works in Japanese. In Japanese, adding an extra 's' to /tu/ makes no sense.

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Originally posted by aput:
This is someone who's been exposed to English for too long. This is not how it works in Japanese. In Japanese, adding an extra 's' to /tu/ makes no sense.

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Wow! That's quite a jump! You presume that, because she doesn't agree with you, she has been exposed to english too long. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the Hepburn system is the one she learned in Japan and she is not aware of any other system?

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaji):

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Japanese school children now learn Hepburn when they first begin to learn the English alphabet in junior high school.

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And Andrew Horvat, the Japan representative of The Asia Foundation ( [http://www.ajiazaidan.org/english/forums/19-6-2004/profile.html http://www.cic.sfu.ca/horvat/) says (http://www.cic.sfu.ca/tqj/GettingRight/romajiconundrum.html):

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Older Japanese were familiar with the Kunreeshiki, but younger Japanese who spoke English felt more at home with Hepburn, which uses English-style rules to write Japanese sounds.

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Tinman

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tinman,

But the Hepburn system doesn't match the Japanese language -- at least, not as regards /tu/. Would you write kying for king, or bolwt for bolt, or phan for pan? Native speakers of languages don't have access to minute differences of sound that don't affect meanings.

quote:

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Originally posted by aput:
But the Hepburn system doesn't match the Japanese language -- at least, not as regards /tu/.

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I agree with you about that. I'm not arguing the merits of either system. I'm saying the Hepburn system has been and apparently is being taught to Japanese Children. My friend was born and raised in Japan and she was apparently taught the Hepburn system there. You may not like the Hepburn system, but you can't deny that it exists and is widely used inside and outside Japan.

Tinman