In the last article, I explained the rules of “Shiritori しりとり”, Japanese word chain game, and thought a little bit deeply about the rule 2.
If you choose a new word ending with the character “n ん”, you will lose a game. In Japanese, we don’t have any words staring with “n ん”. This means you cannot chain a word anymore.
In this article, I’d like to talk about what will happen to the rule 1 when the game is played in English. The rule 1 as follows:
You have to choose a new word so that the last character of the previous word becomes the head of the new word, for instance: しりとり→りんご. The previous word is now “shiritori しりとり” and “りんご” is chosen as a new word. Two characters on both sides of the arrow are the same “ri り”. The tail (hip) is taken and becomes the head of the new word. This is the reason why the game is called “shiritori しりとり” and introduced as Japanese word chain game.
When Japanese people play “shiritori しりとり”, basically they don’t write down words but play it only with verbal communications. When they hear the word “shiritori しりとり”, they can understand that it ends with the character “ri り” from its pronunciation and naturally they can choose a new word starting with “ri り”. The new word obviously starts with “ri り” sounds. What I’d like to say here is that in Japanese we can easily chain words without considering the difference between characters and sounds. The relationships between Japanese characters and their sounds are much stronger than those in English.
In English, if the previous word is “shiritori”, how can we choose a new word? The word starting with the character “i” shall be chosen? Or otherwise, the word starting “li” sound shall be chosen? The relationships between English words and their pronunciations are not strong enough to continue the game smoothly. Before starting the game, the rule 1 shall define how players can chain words. In Japanese, the rule 1 is based on the assumption where characters and their sounds are corresponding to each other one by one. This assumption is not valid for English. In English, we can make two words which have completely the same pronunciations like “fish” and “ghoti”. I know this pair is an extreme example, but basically, it can show you that English is completely different from Japanese language.
To be honest, I’m not sure why the word chain game is not so popular and commonly played in English or other languages. As we can see, however, the rules cannot work well and shall be modified according to requirements of each language. Fortunately, in Japanese, characters and their sounds correspond very well. I used Hiragana characters as examples. If I’d used Kanji characters, the story would’ve been different. Usually Kanji characters can be read in several ways and will cause the same problem as we faced with English words written in alphabets.
As we observed, we can understand some characteristics of languages through a simple word game. Perhaps, you have an interesting word game which cannot be played smoothly in Japanese.
