Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🐟 A deep-sea fish ⚖️ A legal delay 🔤 A sound unit
mora

mora

9.9
A unit for counting the length of sounds in speech, used in languages like Japanese
  • noun
  • /ˈmɔːrə/
  • Specialized
translation icon : mora
  • Many languages use the mora to organize their syllables, affecting how words are pronounced.

Examples

  • Japanese is another good example of a phonetic/meaning-based runic system (called moras).

    Blog text (23)

  • In Japanese, each sound is represented by a unit called a mora, which helps determine the length of syllables.

  • When studying the structure of syllables, it is important to understand the concept of a mora in phonology.

Surface Forms

mora singular
moras plural

Etymology

Mora in phonology comes from the Latin mora meaning 'delay' and was used to name a small unit of time in speech. Think of a mora as a little 'beat' or 'pause' that shows how long a syllable lasts, which is why it measures syllable weight.