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In Japanese, “light rain” is 小雨, or “little rain”, which is pronounced kosame instead of the expected “ko-ame”. Where’s that extra “s” in the middle coming from?

The obvious explanation is that the “s” makes it easier to pronounce, since otherwise you’d have two vowels right next to each other. There is a word for this phenomenon, namely “epenthesis”, the insertion of a sound or letter within a word, found in many languages. In Japanese, it’s called 音挿入 (on-sōnyū, “sound insertion”). Other examples of this are the insertion of the small っ (tsu) in words like 真昼間 (まっぴるま, mappiruma, “in the middle of the day”), instead of the expected ma-hiruma, and the same with words like 真っ白 (masshiro, “pure white”). An alternative name for this occurrence is 音韻添加 (on’in-tenka, “phoneme attachment”). One source defines it as

前接語と後接語の音が合わさる時、新しい音素が追加される現象

the phenomenon in which a new phoneme is added when the sounds at the end of one word and the beginning of the next would combine

and gives as examples both 真ん中 (mannnaka, “right in the middle”), and—wait—another type of rain, 春雨 (harusame, “spring rain”). And you thought harusame were only the glass noodles. No, actually it also refers to the gentle rains of spring (as well as the Japanese WWII destroyer, but I digress).

Of course, there is an alternative theory, which is that in the case of the rain-related compounds the insertion of the “s” is not a phonetic transformation at all, but that same was actually an old variant of ame. In support of that hypothesis experts point out how rarely this insertion occurs, other than that of the little っ (tsu). There’s no way to know.

In any case, how many other Japanese words for rain involving phoneme insertion (always of “s”) are there, anyway? At least a few others, as it turns out.

霧雨 (kirisame) means “mist-like rain” or “drizzle”, involving very small drops.

氷雨 (hisame) means “hail”, but can also refer to “freezing rain”.Confusingly, the character 霈 can also be read ひさめ and refers to a long rainy spell, in which meaning it can also be written 大雨 (or 甚雨). Go figure.

Then there is 群雨 or 叢雨 (murasame, “downpour”), a short, intense cloudburst, sometimes (mis-)translated as “passing shower”. But why 群, which I thought meant “herd”? One source clarifies that this refers to 群れた雨—presumably referring to the “clustering” nuance of the word 群れる (mureru). (It is also written 村雨 (based on its pronunciation, in other words, this is an ate-ji). The Swedish call this “skyfall”, not to be confused with the name of James Bond’s childhood home.

Very similar in meaning to 叢雨 is 屡雨 (shiba-ame), although this word seems to include the nuance of “intermittent”—starting and stopping—and for some reason gets no inserted “s”. By the way, this character 屡 means “frequent”, and is the one used in the familiar word 屡々 (shiba-shiba, “often”).

Then there is the related 俄雨 (niwaka-ame, “sudden shower”), although this is missing the aspect of heavy rain; the “s” does not get inserted here either.

So the guy I made fun of on Twitter who claimed that Japanese had an excessive number of words for rain was actually right. And quite a few of them have that special epenthetic “s” in the middle! I guess they need that many for all the haiku they write!

For extra credit, what’s the phenomenon involved in the pronunciation of 長雨 (nagame, long rain), where the two “a”s in what should be naga-ame coalesce into one? Why, that would be 音韻脱落 (on’in-datsuraku, phoneme elision).

We will defer to a future post the question of why for the Japanese “light rain” is “small”, or “heavy rain” “big” (大雨, ooame).

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