グリンピース

Japanese

Etymology

The same as グリーンピース. The English phrase green peas contains two instances of the long vowel /iː/ (the first in green, the second in peas), only the second of which is respected in this Japanese transcription as a proper long vowel. This has been cited as an example of what is called by American linguist Julie Beth Lovins "prenasal vowel shortening", the shortening of a long vowel or diphthong before the nasal ン, which reflects a tendency of Japanese to avoid a superheavy syllables with three or more morae introduced by loanwords. In this case, such form as リーン would, by the typical definition, be a single syllable with three morae (both the lengthening ー and the nasal ン are morae that cannot form distinct syllables on their own), which necessitates the shortening of the vowel to reduce the syllable's weight. This phenomenon, albeit not universal, is responsible for other seemingly irregular transcriptions such as ファンデーション (fandēshon, “foundation”), ケンブリッジ (Kenburijji, “Cambridge”), レンジ (renji, “range”), etc.

Pronunciation

• (Tokyo) グリンピース [gùríń píꜜìsù] (Nakadaka – [4])
• IPA^(key): [ɡɯ̟ɾʲim pʲiːsɨ]

Noun

グリンピース • (gurin pīsu) 

1. Alternative form of グリーンピース (gurīn pīsu, “grean peas”)