Japanese and other languages (mere coincidence)
- Thread starter ax
- Start date
lexico
後輩
- 22 Dec 2004
- 2,584
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These are wonderful comparisons, アクス!ax said:
The French and the Japanese are so close, and the Chinese is not that far off either. Going back in time, furthermore, your question raises some interesting questions.
Aside from random coincidence, your suspicion of a global root for "road," I think, deserves some attention. I should probably have to look up OED to get the accepted English etymology, but I looked up The Amrican Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (Calvert Watkins, 1985, Houghton Mifflin Co., p. 23) which says *ghredh- "to walk, to go." May or may not be the origin of "road," however. Waiting for updates on this.
The phonetic component 各 [ky: おのおの;oy: G. & K. かく, かっ] /ge4/ "each, every" is suspected to have an old *KL- initial. The turtle shell script of it is a pictograph of the human right foot 夂 (seen from top, with the big toe pointing downwards, see 夂 here mythes et légendes) entering a cave or a pit dwelling 口. You can find a sample interpretation of 各 mid-page here. 说文解字话甲骨 Sorry, couldn't find anything in Japanese or English yet.
各 compounds retaining the *K- initial: 客, 格, 貉, 狢, 挌, 骼, 恪, 閣, 胳
各 compounds retaining the *L- initial: 路, 略, 輅, 洛, 落, 酪, 駱, 烙, 雒, 鮥
Other primary graphs and compounds suspected to have both the *KL- initial and the sense of "road, street, road-side quarters" are: 街, 衢, 逵, 行, 巷, 港. Laurant Sagart seems to see the /*K-/ as an Old Chinese prefix, reconstructing 路 as /*Ce-lak-s/ > *luH, where "C" stands for some undetermined consonant, and "e" for the schwa. The theory I'm quoting is from Choi, Yong Ai.
Mod. Kor. has /ko2ri/ for "broad street," /kil/ for "road." I'm interested in more examples from Japanese and other languages that either show a /kl~kr-/, /k-/, or /l~r-/ initial for the sense of "road, street, walk, enter, descend, dwelling, or cave."
Edit: 路 「ky: みち, じ; oy: G. ru, K. ro」 "road, on one's way, the Way, a means"
I wonder what the Middle Japanese or Old Japanese forms are for the modern Japanese /michi/ or /ji/?
Edit2:
Laurant Sagart, The Roots of Old Chinese, 1999, gives the following Old Chinese reconstructions. OC > MC > Mandarin
各 *[A]k-lak > *kak > ge4 "enter" (p. 128)
骼 *[A]kr-lak> *kaek> ge1 "hind-leg, haunch"
骼 *[A]k-lak > *kak > ge1 "hind-leg, haunch"
落 *[A]ke-lak> *lak > luo4 "to fall, for tree leaves"
貉 *[A]Nk-lak> *hak> he2 "badger, marmot"
胳 *[A]k-lak > *kak > ge1 "armpit" (p. 125)
路 *[A]Ce-lak-s>*luH> lu4 "great"
酪 *[A]rak > *lak > lao4 "kumiss, fermented drink, (late borrowing) < arak, alcohol"
輅 *[A]ngra(k)-s > *ngaeH > ya4 "meet"
逵 *[*]Kwru > *gwij > kui2 "where several roads meet, thoroughfare"
[A] and [*] refers to Pulleyblank's distinction of sounds; nature unclear.
Zhou Fa Gao, The Pronuncing Dictionary of Chinese Characters, 1989, says
街 *kreγ > *kei > jie1 "avenue"
行 *grang> *γrang > xing2 "row, street"
巷 *grewng > *γong > xiang4 "street"
For the last three and other characters not listed here, one should consult William Baxter's A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology, 1992, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter.
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Flowerbird
後輩
- 22 Dec 2004
- 15
- 0
Since Japanese is said to be a unique language (not related to others), that some words have a similar sound to other words in other languages must be sheer coincidence. Spanish and Japanese have nothing to do with each other, and yet, many words share the same sounds in both languages. Here are some examples:
"baka" "vaca" (cow)
"koko" "coco" (coconut)
"kara" "cara" (face)
"kama" "cama" (bed)
"te" "te" (tea)
Other words are very similar, and only change the sound of one vowel, as "miru" and "miro" (I watch). These similarities have helped me memorise a lot of vocabulary, including some rude words!
"baka" "vaca" (cow)
"koko" "coco" (coconut)
"kara" "cara" (face)
"kama" "cama" (bed)
"te" "te" (tea)
Other words are very similar, and only change the sound of one vowel, as "miru" and "miro" (I watch). These similarities have helped me memorise a lot of vocabulary, including some rude words!
This is a very interesting and informative thread. The discussion here is of high caliber.
Hi, lexico, sorry to point this out. The character 我 in Modern Chinese and Korean still have the plural meaning of "we" or "our", and it is still in use. Therefore, the original meaning of 我 in all three languages, Chinese, Japanese and Korean still remains, which means "I" in its singular form and "we" in its plural form.
Common examples of it being use:
Chinese:
我軍 pronounced as wo3 jun1 means "our troops" or "our forces".
我方 pronounced as wo3 fang1 means "our side".
我隊 pronounced as wo3 dui4 means "our team".
Japanese:
Can be used just like the Chinese.
Example:
我社 pronounced as わがしゃ (wagasya) means "our company".
Korean:
Can be used just like the Chinese.
Example:
我軍 pronounced as 아군 (a kun) means "our troops" or "our forces", just like Chinese.
吾等 strictly speaking means "me and others", hence comes the English meaning "we". It can be used interchangeably with 我等 in all three languages.
Very exciting discussion, it took me quite sometimes to finish reading everyone excellent comments. Sorry, for the late reply.
Everyone here seems to miss out one very important element in the Chinese language. The term Chinese language is a very vague term, because, China is so big, there are many people living in this vast country, people from different region in China speak different dialects. The current official language of Mainland China and Taiwan today is Mandarin, Mandarin is based on one of the many dialects in China, that dialect is Beijing dialect. However, Beijing dialect is not Mandarin. There is a different in it. The history of the current standard Mandarin only starts at about 100 years ago.
To understand Chinese "languages" (or "dialects") one has to understand the long history of China, the geography and the different ethnic groups living in this country. More importantly is how these different ethnic groups moved around China during different periods and mixed or "combined" or assimilated with one another. That will play a very crucial factor in the development of the Chinese languages or dialects. This will further on has implication on the Japanese language, as we know that Japanese ancestors started to travel to China at about 500-700 AD, the Japanese do not travel to just one part of China, they travelled to different parts of China from time to time, even if they travel to the same part of China from time to time, that same part of China might changed, the people may had moved in from another region, therefore changing the linguistic profile of that place.
Let's get back to topic and see the relationship of the Japanese pronunciations of the kanji 我. As being pointed out, it can be pronounced as "wa" or "ga".
In various Chinese "languages" or "dialects", it can pronounced as such:
Standard Mandarin : Wo3
Cantonese : Ngo
Hakka : Ngai
Hokkien : Nga, Wa, Nwa (depends on region)
Teochew: Wa
Shandong : Ngann
Wu dialect: Ngwu
● Shanghainese: Wo / Gnu
Of course, there are many more, considering the vast area of China, however those that I listed are the major ones, even the same dialect varies from one place to another. But one can see that their sounds share some sorts of similarity.
If one look at Chinese history, one will see that, China changed from dynasty to dynasty, the capital had been moved around from one place to another place, until it finally settled in Beijing. Every time the emperor changed, the "official dialect" may change as well depending on where the emperor came from. Thus, official dialect had been different in China for most of the time.
Another thing I like to point out is that, Chinese people divide a language into spoken（話） and written （文）. Most of the dialects have the spoken form but do not have the written form. However all spoken form if can be written, used Chinese character, and the grammar is basically the same, that is why people living in China thousand years ago can understand each other clearly despite the different way they spoke. Under the written form, it can be divided into two again, one is the modern form that we see today, evolved in the last century, the other one called 文言文 has been used in China for thousands of years, and this form of writing is what I will say "archaic Chinese". This form of archaic Chinese had been the standard writing system in china for thousands of years, even if the emperor changed, the official dialect changed, this written form had always been the same, at most there were changes in certain words or terms.
Therefore, it is not so appropriate to use "Archaic Chinese→Early Modern Chinese→Modern Chinese" (AEM) model. Because it is simply a different dialect, rather then evolved into another thing. Of course, each dialect has been evolving too, it has changed from time to time, AEM model thus can be used in this situation when a particular regional dialect is specified, nevertheless, most Chinese dialects, still preserve a lot of elements of the spoken language thousand of years ago in China. Because of this reason, it is important to understand Chinese regional dialect if one were to understand what were spoken in the past, or even understand Japanese or Korean loan words, as most of them came from dialects rather than the modern Chinese official language.
lexico said:
Hi, lexico, sorry to point this out. The character 我 in Modern Chinese and Korean still have the plural meaning of "we" or "our", and it is still in use. Therefore, the original meaning of 我 in all three languages, Chinese, Japanese and Korean still remains, which means "I" in its singular form and "we" in its plural form.
Common examples of it being use:
Chinese:
我軍 pronounced as wo3 jun1 means "our troops" or "our forces".
我方 pronounced as wo3 fang1 means "our side".
我隊 pronounced as wo3 dui4 means "our team".
Japanese:
Can be used just like the Chinese.
Example:
我社 pronounced as わがしゃ (wagasya) means "our company".
Korean:
Can be used just like the Chinese.
Example:
我軍 pronounced as 아군 (a kun) means "our troops" or "our forces", just like Chinese.
吾等 is not dead in its usage, it is still used today, especially in the Chinese language, it is also used in Korean and Japanese, though not that common as in Chinese.lexico said:
吾等 strictly speaking means "me and others", hence comes the English meaning "we". It can be used interchangeably with 我等 in all three languages.
John Lemon said:Here's another oddity about "我": as far as I know it's often read "wa", which almost sounds the same as the way "我" is pronounced in Mandarin, right? It's even written the same, even though its usage is different.
If so, why is the Japanese on reading of "我" "ga", then? Does that mean "我" was pronounced "ga" in Chinese at some point in time, then?
lexico said:Thank you for correcting me, John. I don't speak Japanese.After reading your post, I looked up Rose-Innes' Beginners' Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Characters & Compounds, which says
我 /ware/; kanji reading /ga/; "I, my, we, our"; 10 compounds listed
also reads /wa/ before postposition GA; "my, mine, self-will"
吾 /ware/, /waga/, /a/; kanji reading /go/; "my"; 2 compounds listed
As for the other two questions you raised, I cannot explain the "wa." Could it be a contraction of /ware/, or an alternate kanji reading of 我? I doubt the second possibility. According to another dictionary, both the Kanon and Go'on are /ga/. Could it then be a third(?) kanji reading, from Early Mandarin or later?
As you guessed correctly, 我 had an initial /ng/ in Archaic and Middle chinese, which was lost some time between late Tang-Song dynasties (Late Middle Chinese) and Yuan dynasty (Early Mandarin).
我 /nga^/ Archaic C. > /nga^/ E.M.C. > /nga/ L.M.C > /wo3/ Early Mandarin
吾 followed a parallel path losing the /ng/ along the way.
吾 /nga^g/ Archaic C. > /ngo/ E.M.C. > /nguo/ L.M.C. > /wu2/ Early Mandarin
ToMach said:
Very exciting discussion, it took me quite sometimes to finish reading everyone excellent comments. Sorry, for the late reply.
Everyone here seems to miss out one very important element in the Chinese language. The term Chinese language is a very vague term, because, China is so big, there are many people living in this vast country, people from different region in China speak different dialects. The current official language of Mainland China and Taiwan today is Mandarin, Mandarin is based on one of the many dialects in China, that dialect is Beijing dialect. However, Beijing dialect is not Mandarin. There is a different in it. The history of the current standard Mandarin only starts at about 100 years ago.
To understand Chinese "languages" (or "dialects") one has to understand the long history of China, the geography and the different ethnic groups living in this country. More importantly is how these different ethnic groups moved around China during different periods and mixed or "combined" or assimilated with one another. That will play a very crucial factor in the development of the Chinese languages or dialects. This will further on has implication on the Japanese language, as we know that Japanese ancestors started to travel to China at about 500-700 AD, the Japanese do not travel to just one part of China, they travelled to different parts of China from time to time, even if they travel to the same part of China from time to time, that same part of China might changed, the people may had moved in from another region, therefore changing the linguistic profile of that place.
Let's get back to topic and see the relationship of the Japanese pronunciations of the kanji 我. As being pointed out, it can be pronounced as "wa" or "ga".
In various Chinese "languages" or "dialects", it can pronounced as such:
Standard Mandarin : Wo3
Cantonese : Ngo
Hakka : Ngai
Hokkien : Nga, Wa, Nwa (depends on region)
Teochew: Wa
Shandong : Ngann
Wu dialect: Ngwu
● Shanghainese: Wo / Gnu
Of course, there are many more, considering the vast area of China, however those that I listed are the major ones, even the same dialect varies from one place to another. But one can see that their sounds share some sorts of similarity.
If one look at Chinese history, one will see that, China changed from dynasty to dynasty, the capital had been moved around from one place to another place, until it finally settled in Beijing. Every time the emperor changed, the "official dialect" may change as well depending on where the emperor came from. Thus, official dialect had been different in China for most of the time.
Another thing I like to point out is that, Chinese people divide a language into spoken（話） and written （文）. Most of the dialects have the spoken form but do not have the written form. However all spoken form if can be written, used Chinese character, and the grammar is basically the same, that is why people living in China thousand years ago can understand each other clearly despite the different way they spoke. Under the written form, it can be divided into two again, one is the modern form that we see today, evolved in the last century, the other one called 文言文 has been used in China for thousands of years, and this form of writing is what I will say "archaic Chinese". This form of archaic Chinese had been the standard writing system in china for thousands of years, even if the emperor changed, the official dialect changed, this written form had always been the same, at most there were changes in certain words or terms.
Therefore, it is not so appropriate to use "Archaic Chinese→Early Modern Chinese→Modern Chinese" (AEM) model. Because it is simply a different dialect, rather then evolved into another thing. Of course, each dialect has been evolving too, it has changed from time to time, AEM model thus can be used in this situation when a particular regional dialect is specified, nevertheless, most Chinese dialects, still preserve a lot of elements of the spoken language thousand of years ago in China. Because of this reason, it is important to understand Chinese regional dialect if one were to understand what were spoken in the past, or even understand Japanese or Korean loan words, as most of them came from dialects rather than the modern Chinese official language.
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Modern michi is OJ *miti, where *mi- is a prefix, so road is really just *ti. Ji is in fact only found in compounds (yama-ji) and comes from Middle Japanese -di, OJ *-ndi, and ultimately -Nti, where -N- is a particle, so the root is the same : *tilexico said:
As I think I said previously, "wa(re)" is nothing more than the translation of the meaning of the character 我 : its more a gloss than a reading.seasurfer said:
You're making a good point : the Sino-Japanese readings labelled kan'on 漢音 are direct descendants of a particular dialect : the Late Middle Chinese dialect of Chang'an 長安, the capital of the Tang 唐 dynasty (7th-8th C).
Old Chinese (called before Archaic Chinese) = the language spoken during the Zhou 周 dynasty in northern China, around the middle course of the Huang He 黃河 river, as reflected in early Chinese classics and bronze inscriptions as well as the phonetic series of the Chinese script. It is subdivided into Early Old Chinese, of the Western Zhou 西周 dynasty (11th-7th century BC), which accounts for both the rhymes of the Shijing 詩経 and the phonetic series, and is the ancestor of all attested varieties of Chinese (modern dialects, language of the Odes, Middle Chinese), and Late Old Chinese, of the mid and late Zhou (7th-2nd century BC), the dialect of the Book of the Odes, close to the Classical Chinese literary language but not the ancestor of Middle Chinese. The Old Chinese language of the Zhou expanded eastward, replacing the various Tibeto-Burman, Miao-yao, Austroasiatic, etc, languages of the existing populations.
What was before labelled Ancient Chinese is now called Middle Chinese, and we distinguish two different varieties:
Early Middle Chinese is the language reflected by the Qieyun 切韻, a conservative compromise of the standard pronunciations of educated people in both North and South during the 6th century.
Late Middle Chinese is the language of the Tang, which accounts for most of the distinctions found in modern dialects, and is the major source for Sino-Japanese (kan'on), Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese.
Only the Min 閩 dialects seem to have split off much more earlier than the time of Middle Chinese.
Old Mandarin is an early form of Mandarin preserved in Zhongyuan yinyun 中原音韻 and other works (13th-14th C)
When we write Old Chinese>Early Middle Chinese>Late Middle Chinese>Modern Chinese, we don't think of a strict linear evolution : we give the forms in each attested standard dialect in a chronological dialect, because the modern forms can be derived by rules from the precedent standard.
lexico
後輩
- 22 Dec 2004
- 2,584
- 155
Thank you, and a word for crab...
Thank you, SeaSurfer and ToMach, for offering your expert knowledge.
Such deserve a sub-forum of its own under "Chinese Linguistics" or "Interdisciplinary Linguistics," yet I am sure everyone is glad to have it available at all.
If anyone can add a short list of bibliography, this could well grow into a textbook thread!
And thanks again to Ax for starting this unique thread which brought in such wonderful knowledge.
I'd like to add a short comment on terms used for the historical stages of Chinese.
古文 vs. 今文: These two referred to the two classes of Chinese Classics that were in competition for authority during the Former Han dynasty. After the burning of books by Qin Shihuangdi and Li Si in 208 BCE, most of the pre-Qin classics written in the 6 States Scripts 六國文字 disappeared and had to be transcribed by imperial decree in the new norm called Small Seal script 小篆. There also developed the Scribe Character 隸書, an offshoot of the vulgar forms of the 6 States Scripts, around the time of the Small Seal script. It eventually evolved into the Standard Charters 楷書 as we know them.
Because the term 古文 not only referred to the script but also the text, the written style, and the language in which it was written, this may cause some confusion. The terms 古文 and 古漢語 are therefore vague and need to be qualified with words denoting the historical period under focus.
With the beginning of Chinese historical phonology during the Qing dynasty and works by Bernard Karlgren, "Ancient Chinese" was used to refer to the language approximating the various dialect of the Nanbei Chao to Early Tang dynasty. He also referred to "Archaic Chinese" to denote the Zhou language as reflected in the Book of Poems and the semantic-phonetic compounds evidenced in the Zhou Bronze inscriptions.
Recent developments in Chinese historical phonology appears to have replaced the "Archaic > Ancient > Middle Chinese" to "Old > Early Middle > Late Middle." Anyone familliar with the recent Chinese sources, please respond with the Chinese standard terms corresponding to the current English usage.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
While leaving the issue of standard terminology open to further discussion, let me resume our interesting word correspondence talk.
I'd like to offer a well known comparison also touched upon by Miller.
[pong] [/pong]Japanese /kani/~Korean /ke/~Chinese /xie4/~Latin /kanker/
Chinese 蟹 /????/ **kre?> *keaiX > ?
Chinese 蟹 /xie4/ **N-kre?> *heaiX (Late Middle)> gaij'/ge:j' (Early Mandarin) > xie4 (Mandarin)
Andrew Roy Miller says Japanese /*kani/ has no connections with Malayo-Polynesian but with several Altaic languages meaning "tick."
Proto-Turkic /*kana/ "tick"
East-Turkic /kaka/ "all kinds of parasites"
Modern Turkish /kene/
Khazakh /kena/ "tick"
Osmanli /gene/ "tick"
For dissimilar comparison, this would be 蚤 "ticks, lice," its cognate 爪 "fingernails, to scratch," or 騷 "the noise of a horse gone wild from tick/louse bites."
Miller attributes this comparison to a private letter from John Street (Mar. 19, 1975), and his Altaic Elements in Old Japanese, Vol 2 (?). Turkic material from Rasanen, M. 1949, Versuch eines etymologischen Wörterbuchs der Turksprachen, Helsinki (p.251b).
Andrew Roy Miller, Origins of the Japanese Language, Univ. of Washington Press, 1980
Korean translation, by Kim, Pang Han, 日本語의 起源, 1985 (p. 162)
Japanese translation,
Note: diacritics have been omitted in general, and /g/ is for the velar voiced fricative.
Thank you, SeaSurfer and ToMach, for offering your expert knowledge.
Such deserve a sub-forum of its own under "Chinese Linguistics" or "Interdisciplinary Linguistics," yet I am sure everyone is glad to have it available at all.
If anyone can add a short list of bibliography, this could well grow into a textbook thread!
And thanks again to Ax for starting this unique thread which brought in such wonderful knowledge.
I'd like to add a short comment on terms used for the historical stages of Chinese.
古文 vs. 今文: These two referred to the two classes of Chinese Classics that were in competition for authority during the Former Han dynasty. After the burning of books by Qin Shihuangdi and Li Si in 208 BCE, most of the pre-Qin classics written in the 6 States Scripts 六國文字 disappeared and had to be transcribed by imperial decree in the new norm called Small Seal script 小篆. There also developed the Scribe Character 隸書, an offshoot of the vulgar forms of the 6 States Scripts, around the time of the Small Seal script. It eventually evolved into the Standard Charters 楷書 as we know them.
Because the term 古文 not only referred to the script but also the text, the written style, and the language in which it was written, this may cause some confusion. The terms 古文 and 古漢語 are therefore vague and need to be qualified with words denoting the historical period under focus.
With the beginning of Chinese historical phonology during the Qing dynasty and works by Bernard Karlgren, "Ancient Chinese" was used to refer to the language approximating the various dialect of the Nanbei Chao to Early Tang dynasty. He also referred to "Archaic Chinese" to denote the Zhou language as reflected in the Book of Poems and the semantic-phonetic compounds evidenced in the Zhou Bronze inscriptions.
Recent developments in Chinese historical phonology appears to have replaced the "Archaic > Ancient > Middle Chinese" to "Old > Early Middle > Late Middle." Anyone familliar with the recent Chinese sources, please respond with the Chinese standard terms corresponding to the current English usage.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
While leaving the issue of standard terminology open to further discussion, let me resume our interesting word correspondence talk.
I'd like to offer a well known comparison also touched upon by Miller.
[pong] [/pong]Japanese /kani/~Korean /ke/~Chinese /xie4/~Latin /kanker/Chinese 蟹 /????/ **kre?> *keaiX > ?
Chinese 蟹 /xie4/ **N-kre?> *heaiX (Late Middle)> gaij'/ge:j' (Early Mandarin) > xie4 (Mandarin)
Andrew Roy Miller says Japanese /*kani/ has no connections with Malayo-Polynesian but with several Altaic languages meaning "tick."
Proto-Turkic /*kana/ "tick"
East-Turkic /kaka/ "all kinds of parasites"
Modern Turkish /kene/
Khazakh /kena/ "tick"
Osmanli /gene/ "tick"
For dissimilar comparison, this would be 蚤 "ticks, lice," its cognate 爪 "fingernails, to scratch," or 騷 "the noise of a horse gone wild from tick/louse bites."
Miller attributes this comparison to a private letter from John Street (Mar. 19, 1975), and his Altaic Elements in Old Japanese, Vol 2 (?). Turkic material from Rasanen, M. 1949, Versuch eines etymologischen Wörterbuchs der Turksprachen, Helsinki (p.251b).
Andrew Roy Miller, Origins of the Japanese Language, Univ. of Washington Press, 1980
Korean translation, by Kim, Pang Han, 日本語의 起源, 1985 (p. 162)
Japanese translation,
Note: diacritics have been omitted in general, and /g/ is for the velar voiced fricative.
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中村
