“鼻濁音”下個世紀幾乎消失？一些地區原來也沒用它...

Last month the Asahi News on-line reported the following:

「鼻濁音」来世紀ほぼ消滅？　もともと使わない地域も…

白石明彦

2015年3月5日07時53分

　日本語で優しく響く発音とされるガ行の「鼻濁音（びだくおん）」を日常生活で使う人は５人に１人しかおらず、全国的に著しく衰退しつつあることが、国立国語研究所の調査でわかった。来世紀には東北地方でわずかに残るだけとなり、それ以外の地域は消滅する可能性が高いという。

　ガギグゲゴには通常の濁音と、息を鼻に抜いてやわらかく発音する鼻濁音がある。たとえば「学校」のガは通常の濁音で、「鏡」のガは鼻濁音で発音する。特にアナウンサーの場合、鼻濁音の発音は欠かせない。ただし、もともと鼻濁音を使わない地域も多い。

　ノートルダム清心女子大の尾崎喜光教授（社会言語学）は２０１０年まで在籍した国語研で０９年３月、全国の成人８０３人を対象に「国民の言語使用と言語意識に関する全国調査」を行い、発音の実態を調べた。この種の全国調査では初めて調査員が回答者の声をＩＣレコーダーで録音し、尾崎さんが分析した。

(試譯文)

   There was only one person in every five who in their daily life used the "nasal consonant" for the “Ga line” syllables that made the Japanese pronunciation more gently: in an investigation, a remarkable decline nationwide was found out by the National Institute for Japanese Language. It was said that in the next century "nasal consonant" could only exit sparingly in a few Northeast districts, outside these areas the possibility was high that it would become extinct.

   For Ga/Gi/Gu/Ge/Go as a regular consonant, a nasal consonant could be created by stopping the nose from breathing, thereby softening the pronunciation. For example the Ga sound in “Gakko” (school), it was a normal consonant while the ga in “Megane” (mirror) could generate a nasal consonant sound. In particular in a situation for an announcer, the pronunciation of the nasal consonant was a must. But there were also many areas where nasal consonant was not used at the outset.

    Prof. Ozaki Yoshimitsu of the Norte Dame Seishin University (Sociolinguistics), who had enrolled at the National Institute for Japanese Language until 2010, did a "Country-wide investigation on national linguistic usage and linguistic awareness"  that targeted at 803 adults in the whole country in March 2009 by looking at the actual pronunciation. For this kind of country-wide investigation, it was the first time that researchers recorded the respondent's voice by an IC recorder, followed by an analysis done by Mr. Ozaki.

As a student of Japanese Language I am interested in knowing the findings of this research.