Word of the Moment: Origami

There are many ways to look at an origami crane: a fanciful representation of a bird, a symbol of world peace or a folded mathematical plane. Like any symbol, it's meaning is added to its form. Words are symbols, too, and have as many different perspectives. The phonetician looks at them as a stream of air shaped by tongue, lips and vocal chords. The semanticist sees a complex web of meaning and metaphor, while syntax treats words as buds on the many branched tree of a sentence.

I like the morphological perspective: a word is a complex of meaningful elements that relate to its form, its meaning and its function in the sentence. With that in mind, let's take a moment to unfold the word “origami” revealing the pattern on the paper and the creases used to form it.

Origami is not, as is generally assumed of things Japanese, a timeless tradition. Indeed, the word "origami" landed on its modern meaning in Japanese much less than a hundred years ago.  Although Japan has a long tradition of decorative paper-folding, it was variously known as orisue, orikata or orimono and was more ceremonial than recreational.  The educational reforms of the Meiji Period (1868-1912) imported the German kindergarten curriculum, and fused ceremonial Japanese origami with traditional European paper-folding art known as "Papierfalten."

The word “origami” is a compound, consisting of the Japanese "ori" (fold) and "kami" (paper). You may be wondering why “ori” + “kami” creates “origami” and not “orikami”? The reason is a curious phenomena in Japanese called rendaku. In short, Japanese sometimes changes the first sound of the word (or words) when they are made into a compound word.

In this case, the K-sound in “kami” becomes a G-sound when it is added to “ori.” Of course, K-sounds aren't the only consonants that can be changed:

K	becomes	G
T		D
CH		J
S		Z

If this table looks familiar, then you've been paying attention. Recall from our discussion of Sanskrit, that many languages use vibration of the vocal chords to distinguish one speech sound from another. The K-sound is made with the same tongue and jaw movements as a G-sound, but the latter is accompanied by a buzzing sound from the vocal chords. In linguistic terms, we say that the G-sound is voiced and the K-sound is unvoiced. (In Japanese terminology, the voiced sounds are called muddy instead).

Japanese, unlike English or Sanskrit, does not ordinarily distinguish between voiced and unvoiced sounds. However, in a compound word such as “origami”, an unvoiced sound will become voiced at the beginning of the second word.... Sometimes.

To explain why this phenomena exists, we need to know a little bit more about the situations in which rendaku happens or doesn't happen:

1. When the first word ends with an unvoiced sound, rendaku usually doesn't happen.
2. When the first word ends with a voiced sound, however rendaku almost always happens.

An unvoiced K-sound in between two voiced vowels [orikami] will require the speaker to quickly turn their vocal chords on and off and on again. A G-sound in the same spot allows their vocal chords to keep buzzing right along [origami]. Lots of languages have examples of this vocal laziness: the English word “exit” is never pronounced [eksit], but [egzit] instead.

Unfortunately, this “it's easier to pronounce” argument just won't do. There are lots of other examples of when rendaku doesn't happen. For starters, the internal structure or meaning of the new word will determine whether or not the change will happen. And none of this will happen if the word in question is anything but a native Japanese word. Recent English loanwords and even ancient Chinese borrowings simply don't change when they become part of a compound word.

Fortunately for us, loanwords are borrowed in one big chunk o' sound, without any worrying about any folds or creases it had at home. Since we would say “paper-folding” and not (as in Japanese) “folding-paper,” the art of origami dollar bills is called “money-gami” not (“ori-money” or even “money-kami”). Some may quibble that this is not proper Japanese, to which I completely agree. Fortunately, neither “moneygami” or “origami” are Japanese words. Loanwords, like immigrants take up permanent residence in their new homes, and are free to assimilate.

In the case of “origami,” the word has begun to acquire additional meanings since its relocation into English during the 1950's. It has has been used to describe the complex shape of folded protein molecules and modern architecture. The Oxford English Dictionary, which sometimes surprises even me, offers an irresistible quotation from 2001:

K. LETTE Nip 'n' Tuck 37 ‘You have got to get more creative in bed.’ ‘What are you suggesting? Origami?’

And with that mental image, I think my work here is done.

The preceding article is a production of Schendo's Bad Grammar. I owe a tremendous debt to Professor Yoshi, who introduced me to the mystery of rendaku and to the many origami enthusiasts who share the history of their art (see especially K's Origami for a fascinating summary of origami's hybrid Japanese-European history).  The photo comes from Andreas Bauer, via Wikimedia Commons.