Talk:おっぱい

Etymology of 「おっぱい」

From what I've noticed, rendaku seems to shift the ま group into the ば group at times (e.g. 「万歳」 banzai). Although the article says the first hypothesis is unlikely, could 「おまい」 have shifted to 「おばい」 first, then later to 「お（っ）ぱい」 afterwards?

Currently, the article does not imply any such intermediary step, but I think this would make it more easily reconciled with the linguistic pattern of phonetic shifts, thereby more plausible. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 18:08, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

@OzzyMuffin238:

• Rendaku involves the voicing of the second component in a compound. Things like 二本木 (nihon-gi, literally “two + long slender thing + tree”), where the /k/ in 木 (ki, “tree”) voices to become /ɡ/ instead. Or 簪 (kanzashi, “hair pin”), from 髪 (kami, “hair (on one's head)”) + 刺し (sashi, “sticking through”), where the /s/ in sashi voices to become /z/ instead.

So rendaku has nothing to do with any word-initial consonant, nor with any /m/ ↔ /b/ shifts. See more at w:Rendaku.

• The initial "b" in 万歳 (banzai) is from sound shifts in Chinese before the term was borrowed into Japanese -- the ban reading for 万 is the kan'on, indicating a later borrowing than the older goon of man. Have a look in the entry for Chinese 萬／万 (wàn) (the traditional, un-simplified form), particularly the Pronunciation section -- Japanese kan'on readings often aren't too far from the modern Min Nan pronunciations, and in this case, Min Nan pronounces this character as bān, as opposed to Mandarin's wàn or Cantonese's maan⁶.
• Considering historical phonological shifts, umai becoming ubai isn't entirely unlikely. However, /ùbáí/ becoming /óppàì/ involves two unlikely changes: medial /-b-/ devoicing and then geminating and to /-pp-/, and the pitch accent flipping.
• In light of the pitch accent, I wonder if this might instead be related to 乳母 (uba, “wetnurse”), which also has an initial high pitch as /úbà/. The semantics (meaning) is also a close fit. That said, I haven't seen this mentioned in references, so this is only my own personal speculation.

Whatever the case, this is from baby talk, so to a certain extent, all bets are off. 😄 ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:58, 3 August 2022 (UTC)