母音調和 Vowel Harmony

日本語が、トルコ語、蒙古語、ツングース語とともに、アルタイ系で, 遠くはウラル系のフィンランド語やハンガリー語と縁がある、とする根拠のひとつに 上代日本語に顕著に見られる 母音調和が屢々あげられる。近代日本語では、一単語に同じ母音を連続繰り返す形を、広い意味で母音調和と呼ばれる。古い語彙とされる体の部分に例が多い。例えば、頭、鼻、頬、耳、喉、肩、肘、乳、腹、尻、腿、体、などがある。他に、父、母、爺、婆、男、男の子、山、川、中、外、魚、逆さまがある。

Vowel harmony, seen conspicuously in Ancient Japanese, is often cited as one evidence that the Japanese language belongs to the Altaic language group which includes Turkish, Mongolian, and Tungus and is remotely remotely related to the Ural languages like Finnish and Hungarian. In modern Japanese, the form of repeating the same vowel in one word is, broadly speaking, called vowel harmony. It is abundant in the age-old vocabulary of words referring to body parts, for example, atama (head), hana (nose), hoho (cheek), mimi (ear), nodo (throat), kata (shoulder), hiji (elbow), chichi (breast), hara (belly), shiri (buttock), momo (thigh) and karada (body). We also find chichi (father), haha (mother), jiji (grandfather, old man), baba (grandfather, old woman), otoko (man), otokonoko (boy), yama (mountain), kawa (river), naka (inside), soto (outside), sakana (fish), and sakasama (upside down) are other examples.

一般に、日本語の語彙には、やたらと同じ母音の連続が多い。片仮名に始めて、あからさま、宝、殆ど、泥棒、響き、石鹸、進む、映る、など例は後をつきない。日本語の又別の特徴の擬音語の多数が母音調和をなす。しょぼしょぼ、ざんざん、ぐずぐず、ひりひり、がらがら、むずむず、などなど。

Aside from these words of older vintage, Japanese lexicon is, in general, inordinately rich in words with a single vowel repeated one after another: katakana, to start out with, then, akarasama (self-evident), takara (treasure), hotondo (almost), dorobô (thief), hibiki (echo), sekken (soap), susumu (to proceed), utsuru (to be reflected), etc., ad nauseum. Repeated vowels are rampant in another Japanese feature -- onomatopoeic words: shoboshobo (as of drizzle, or low-spirited), zanzan (as of a downpour), guzuguzu (as of dawdling), hirihiri (as of a stinging pain), garagara (as of rattling noise), muzumuzu (as of itching and impatience).

ウラル、アルタイ系の言語と日本語に、ある程度の統語、構文的な共通点があるとしても、語彙の類似は全くない様です。母音調和も、同一母音連続の語句、文章が構成出来るのは、まさに日本語唯一の特徴ではないでしょうか。例えば、
「東京と京都の男の子の行動」
「農村と漁村の情報」
「男の心、少女の想像、子供の頃の事」
「今日の午後そこの倉庫の構造の状況もろもろ所望の所」
おもろい、おもろい。

There are certain syntactical similarities between Ural-Altaic languages and Japanese; but there is no significant lexical correspondences. It is apparently uniquely Japanese that long phrases and sentences can be formed with one and only one vowel in repetition. For example:
-- Tokyo to Kyoto no otokonoko no kôdô (Boys’conduct in Tokyo and Kyoto)
-- Nôson to gyoson no jôhô (News of the farming and fishing villages)
-- Otoko no kokoro, shôjo no sôzô, kodomo no koro no koto
(Man’s heart, the girl’s imagination, an event in the days of my childhood)
-- Kyô no gogo soko no sôko no kôzô no jôkyô moromoro shomô no tokoro
(Requested this afternoon all the structural conditions of that warehouse)
It’s a lot of fun - Japanese.