On 22/02/2024 3:48 p.m., HenHanna wrote:

Peter T. Daniels wrote:

On Sunday, February 28, 2021 at 10:36:46 PM UTC-5, Dingbat wrote:

<<Japanese has more than 50 words to describe the differing
crispiness of foods. The Japanese are unique in that they eat their
many sweets with all their senses and some are designed for hearing
the sound of a breeze.>>
https://japantoday.com/category/features/food/japanese-words-to-describe-food-textures

I respond: English too has words for degrees of crispness like Crisp
and Soggy, although perhaps not 50 such words. Describing a food by
its sound, however, is not in any language I know.
P.S. I'm quoting someone's comments, I haven't checked whether the
verbiage is also in the Japan Today article.

It's no more likely that Japanese has "50 words for crispiness" than
that "Eskimo" has 200 or 50 or whatever words for snow. Turns out that
Inuktitut (or whichever) has about the same number of different root
words as English does, along with lots of compound words or phrases.
snow sleet slush blizzard (maybe a couple others? I guess some would
add hail) along with hardpack, freezing rain, drift, snowflake,
powder, ...

       PTD being so glib(?) and confident about a topic he knows NOTHING about w w w w w w w

Favorite Japanese food onomatopoeias

The first category are the fried, crunchy 揚げ物

/agemono/ 'fried food'

. You will often hear

these complimented as being “カリカリ!” (“So crispy!”). The term カリカ
リ should be easy for English speakers as it’s supposed to be an onomatopoeia and even sounds like the English word crispy.

Really? It's /karikari/ in Japanese. Well, I guess it has [k-r] in it,
but that doesn't make it sound like "crispy", any more than it sounds
like "creamy". With the reduplication, it almost sounds like a Japanese
version of "crackly".

A similar

word is パリパリ which describes the crunchy feeling of spring rolls and gyoza.

That's /paripari/. I can imagine a phonetic argument that [p] should
indicate something still crunchy but less so than [k], but I won't try
to make it here.

In other words, things that are crispy, but not quite カリカリ

levels of crispy! >
When you bite into the fried food, you might hear that crunching sound.
If you say さくさく quickly, you can soon see why this word represents crunchy, flaky food (as in pastry). The most obvious use is for the
feeling of biting into that Japanese-by-way-of-Portugal food, tempura.

What I find in my dictionary is that /saku/ can mean 'rip' or 'tear'.
Note that this is just a verb for a particular type of action, not an
ideophone representing a sense-impression (like /karikari/).
If you said /sakusaku/ quickly, it would sound to an English speaker
like "suck-suck", which I don't think would conjure up images of crunchy pastry.

-----------when  its too dry and/or insipid...  Pasa-pasa,   poso-poso,
                                               too crumbly:   poro-poro

Japanese ideophones are fascinating, but I think your writer has been a
little carried away into postulating radical cultural/linguistic
differences, while at the same time claiming that these sound-symbolisms
are universal!

https://www.novabbs.com/tech/thread.php?group=sci.lang&first=1401&last=1600

         Lovely to be able to see old posts  without  any of those Spam  Junk

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On 23/02/2024 1:23 a.m., HenHanna wrote:

HenHanna wrote:

Ross Clark wrote:

On 22/02/2024 3:48 p.m., HenHanna wrote:

Peter T. Daniels wrote:

On Sunday, February 28, 2021 at 10:36:46 PM UTC-5, Dingbat wrote:

<<Japanese has more than 50 words to describe the differing
crispiness of foods. The Japanese are unique in that they eat
their many sweets with all their senses and some are designed for
hearing the sound of a breeze.>>
https://japantoday.com/category/features/food/japanese-words-to-describe-food-textures

I respond: English too has words for degrees of crispness like
Crisp and Soggy, although perhaps not 50 such words. Describing a
food by its sound, however, is not in any language I know.
P.S. I'm quoting someone's comments, I haven't checked whether the >>>>>> verbiage is also in the Japan Today article.

It's no more likely that Japanese has "50 words for crispiness"
than that "Eskimo" has 200 or 50 or whatever words for snow. Turns
out that Inuktitut (or whichever) has about the same number of
different root words as English does, along with lots of compound
words or phrases.
snow sleet slush blizzard (maybe a couple others? I guess some
would add hail) along with hardpack, freezing rain, drift,
snowflake, powder, ...

        PTD being so glib(?) and confident about a topic he knows >>>> NOTHING about w w w w w w w



Favorite Japanese food onomatopoeias

The first category are the fried, crunchy 揚げ物

/agemono/ 'fried food'

.. You will often hear

these complimented as being “カリカリ!” (“So crispy!”). The term カ
リカ リ should be easy for English speakers as it’s supposed to be >>>> an onomatopoeia and even sounds like the English word crispy.

Really? It's /karikari/ in Japanese. Well, I guess it has [k-r] in
it, but that doesn't make it sound like "crispy", any more than it
sounds like "creamy". With the reduplication, it almost sounds like a
Japanese version of "crackly".

A similar

word is パリパリ which describes the crunchy feeling of spring rolls >>>> and gyoza.

That's /paripari/. I can imagine a phonetic argument that [p] should
indicate something still crunchy but less so than [k], but I won't
try to make it here.

In other words, things that are crispy, but not quite カリカリ

levels of crispy! >
When you bite into the fried food, you might hear that crunching
sound. If you say さくさく quickly, you can soon see why this word >>>> represents crunchy, flaky food (as in pastry). The most obvious use
is for the feeling of biting into that Japanese-by-way-of-Portugal
food, tempura.

What I find in my dictionary is that /saku/ can mean 'rip' or 'tear'.
Note that this is just a verb for a particular type of action, not an
ideophone representing a sense-impression (like /karikari/).
If you said /sakusaku/ quickly, it would sound to an English speaker
like "suck-suck", which I don't think would conjure up images of
crunchy pastry.

    Saku-saku   can also be used for  (something like)  a small shovel
(SUKOPPU)
    cutting  into Snow

or  for  biting into Celery or other succulent fruit or vegetable.

            Saku-saku   and   SUCCU-lent ,  a hint of ....

  The bouba/kiki effect, or kiki/bouba effect, is a non-arbitrary
mental association between certain speech sounds and certain visual
shapes.

          ----------- except    succulent   is more  moist /  juicy

  Saku-saku   ...............  (more sibilant)... Lighter sound, e.g.
for Powdery  Snow

  Zaku-zaku   is a heavier sound,   e.g.  for digging into soil,  or >> into  frozen  Snow

The "heavier" here is phonetically voiced [z] vs voiceless [s]. I
believe the voicing would reduce the strength of the higher frequencies,
thus making it less sibilant.

I'm looking some of these up in my J-E dictionary (a good one, but small
and several decades old), not to argue with your sources, just to add more:

zaku-zaku:
- jingle
- crunch on gravel
- chop a Welsh onion noisily

https://thejadednetwork.com/sfx/browse/saku_saku/

サクサク,   さくさく    saku saku

(1) *thud thud*;
(2) *crunch crunch*;
(3) *cut*

(1) SFX of soft footsteps on grass;
(2) SFX for quietly eating something lightly crunchy, like biscuits;
(3) Cutting a thin and light object. See also *zaku zaku*.

                 Tags: sakusaku

English "thud" doesn't match soft footsteps -- more like a bowling ball
dropped on grass

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