Sino-Japanese Vocabulary - Phonetic Correspondences Between Modern Chinese and On'yomi

Phonetic Correspondences Between Modern Chinese and On'yomi

At first glance, the on'yomi of many Sino-Japanese words do not resemble the Modern Standard Chinese pronunciations at all. There are two main reasons for this:

  1. Most Sino-Japanese words were borrowed in the 5th - 9th centuries AD, from Early Middle Chinese into Old Japanese. Both languages have changed significantly since then, and in different ways. This has resulted in the respective pronunciations becoming more and more divergent over time.
  2. Middle Chinese had a much more complex syllable structure than Old Japanese, as well as many more vowel and consonant differences. Many sounds and sound combinations had to be approximated in the borrowing process, sometimes with significant differences (e.g. final /ŋ/ was represented as /u/ or /i/.

Nonetheless, the correspondences between the two are fairly regular. As a result, Sino-Japanese can be viewed as a (transformed) "snapshot" of an archaic period of the Chinese language, and as a result is very important for comparative linguists as it provides a large amount of evidence for the reconstruction of Middle Chinese.

The following is a rough guide to equivalencies between modern Chinese words and modern Sino-Japanese on'yomi readings.

Unless otherwise noted, in the list below, sounds shown in quotation marks, such as "h" or "g", refer to Hanyu pinyin romanization for Mandarin Chinese and Hepburn romanization for Japanese. Symbols shown within square brackets, such as or, indicate IPA transcription.

  1. A major sound-shift has occurred in Mandarin since the time of modern contact with the West. Namely, the sounds written in Pinyin as "g" or "k", when immediately preceding an "i", "y" or "ü" sound, became "j" (, similar to English "j") or "q" (, similar to English "ch"). This change is called palatalization. As a result, Peking (北京) changed to Běijīng, and Chungking (重慶) to Chóngqìng. This shift did not occur in Sino-Japanese. Thus, Mandarin (氣, 'breath, air, spirit') corresponds to Japanese ki. In some other Chinese dialects/languages, it is still pronounced as 'ki'. For example, 氣 in Southern Min is khì (POJ romanization). This is similar to the way the Latin , once always pronounced like an English K, became closer to an English CH in Italian words where the C is followed by an E or I, changing centum /kentum/ into cento /tʃento/.
  2. Old Japanese did not have an "-ng" or syllable ending, which is very common in Chinese. This sound was borrowed as either /i/ or /u/. The combinations /au/ and /eu/ later became "ō" and "yō", respectively, in Japanese. Thus, the Mandarin reading of "Tokyo" (東京; Eastern (東) Capital (京)) is Dōngjīng; this corresponds to Japanese Tōkyō, with sound history for 京 being supposed approximately *kiæŋ -> kyau -> kyō (for comparison: Southern Min 京 (colloquial) is kiaⁿ with a nasal diphthong). Another example is 京城, former name for Seoul, which is Keijō in Japanese and Gyeongseong in Korean (which, did and does have syllables ending in ). 京 is read "kei" (*kiæŋ -> kyei -> kei) in this case.
  3. As in the case of 京, the same character sometimes has multiple readings, e.g. "kyō" (Go-on) vs. "kei" (Kan-on) vs. "kin" (Tō-on). These stem from multiple phases of borrowing, which occurred at different times and from different source dialects and were carried out by different groups of people possibly speaking different dialects of Japanese. This means that the same word may have had different Chinese pronunciations, and even if not, the borrowers may have chosen different strategies to handle unfamiliar sounds. For example, the character 京 seems to have had an approximate pronunciation of /kjæŋ/ at the time of both the Go-on (5th - 6th century AD) and Kan-on (7th - 9th century AD) borrowings; however, the unfamiliar vowel /æ/ was represented by /a/ in the former case and /e/ in the latter. (This may also indicate different source pronunciations of the vowel.) In addition, the unfamiliar final /ŋ/ was represented by /u/ in the former case but /i/ in the latter, agreeing in frontness vs. backness with the main vowel. By the time of the Tō-on borrowing (post-10th century), the pronunciation in Chinese had changed to /kiŋ/, and by this time Japanese had developed a syllable-final "n" /ŋ/; hence it could be borrowed directly as "kin".
  4. The vowels of Chinese sometimes correspond to Sino-Japanese in an apparently haphazard fashion. However, Mandarin "ao" often corresponds to Japanese "ō" (usually derived from earlier Sino-Japanese ), and Chinese empty rime (represented in pinyin with a "i") often corresponds to (a different sound, also represented with a "i" in Hepburn) in Japanese.
  5. The distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants ( vs. or vs. ) has been lost in modern Mandarin and many other Chinese languages. The key exception is in Wu dialects (呉語, e.g. Shanghainese). The Shanghainese voiced consonants match the Japanese go-on (呉音) readings nearly perfectly in terms of voicing. For example, 葡萄 (grape) is pronounced "budo" in Shanghainese and "budō" (< "budau") in Japanese (preserving the voiced consonants and ), but "pútáo" in Mandarin. Incidentally, the rising tone of the Mandarin syllables may reflect the earlier voiced quality of the initial consonants.
  6. In modern Mandarin, all syllables end either in a vowel or in one of a small number of consonant sounds: "n", "ng", or occasionally "r". However, Middle Chinese, like several modern Chinese dialects (e.g. Cantonese, Hakka, Min), allowed several other final consonants including, and, and these are preserved in Sino-Japanese (except for -m, which is replaced by -n, as in 三, san, "three"). However, because Japanese phonology does not allow these consonants to appear at the end of a syllable either, they are usually followed in Sino-Japanese by an additional "i" or "u" vowel, resulting in a second syllable (-tsu or -chi if from -t, -ku if from -k, and -fu if from -p). As a result, a one-syllable word in Chinese can become two syllables in Sino-Japanese. For example, Mandarin tiě (铁, 'iron') corresponds to Japanese tetsu (鉄). This is still pronounced with a final in Cantonese: /tʰiːt˧/ (Vietnamese thiết). Another example is Mandarin guó (國, 'land'), from Early Middle Chinese /kwək/, corresponding to Japanese koku.
  7. The consonant "f" in Mandarin corresponds to both "h" and "b" in Japanese. Early Middle Chinese had no /f/, but instead had /pj/ or /bj/ (in other reconstructions, /pɥ/ or /bɥ/). Japanese still reflects this ("h" was /p/ in Old Japanese). For example, Mandarin (佛, Buddha) corresponds to Japanese butsu (仏); both reflect Early Middle Chinese /bjut/ from a still older form /but/. In modern Southern Min Chinese, this character is still pronounced as .
  8. In addition, as in the previous example, Old Japanese /p/ became modern "h". When a Middle Chinese word ended in /p/, this produced further complications in Japanese. For example, Middle Chinese /dʑip/ "ten" (Standard Mandarin "shí", Cantonese /sɐp/) was borrowed as Old Japanese /zipu/. In time this went through a series of changes: /zipu/ > /zihu/ > /ziu/ > /zyū/ > "jū". Note that in some compounds, the word was directly borrowed as /zip-/ > "jip-"; hence "jippun" "ten minutes" (or "juppun", influenced by "jū"), rather than "*jūfun".
  9. More complex is the archaic dento-labial nasal sound: The character 武 (strife, martial arts) was pronounced "mvu" in Late Middle Chinese. The sound is approximated in the Japanese pronunciations "bu" and "mu". However, that sound no longer exists in most modern Chinese dialects, except Southern Min "bú", and the character 武 is pronounced "wǔ" in Mandarin, /mou˩˧/ in Cantonese, "vu" in Hakka, Shanghainese, and Vietnamese.
  10. The modern Mandarin initial "r" usually corresponds to "ny" or "ni" in Japanese. At the time of borrowing, characters such as 人 ('person') and 日 ('day'), which have an initial "r" sound in modern Mandarin, began with a palatal nasal consonant closely approximating French and Italian "gn" and Spanish "ñ". (This distinction is still preserved in some Chinese dialects, such as Hakka and Shanghainese, as well as Vietnamese.) Thus Mandarin Rìběn (日本, Japan) corresponds to Japanese Nippon. This is also why the character 人, pronounced /njin/ in Middle Chinese, is pronounced "nin" in some contexts, as in "ningen" (人間), and "jin" in others, such as "gaijin" (外人)— approximating its more modern pronunciation. In Wu dialects, including Shanghainese, 人 ('person') and 二 ('two') are still pronounced "nin" and "ni", respectively. In Southern Min (especially Zhangzhou accent), 人 is "jîn" (literary pronunciation) which is practically identical to Japanese On'yomi.
  11. In Middle Chinese, 五 ('five') and similar characters were pronounced with a velar nasal consonant, "ng", as its initial. This is no longer true in modern Mandarin, but it remains the case in other Chinese dialects such as Cantonese (/ŋ̩˩˧/) and Shanghainese. Japanese approximates the Middle Chinese "ng" with "g" or "go"; thus 五 becomes "go". In Southern Min, it is pronounced as 'go' while in Fuzhou dialect it is still pronounced "ngu". In addition, Japanese g is pronounced as anyway when medial.
  12. The Mandarin "hu" sound (as in "huá" or "huī") does not exist in Japanese and is usually omitted, whereas the Mandarin "l" sound becomes "r" in Japanese. Thus, Mandarin Huángbò (黄檗) corresponds to Japanese Ōbaku, and Rúlái (如来) to Nyorai.
  13. Mandarin "h", usually from Middle Chinese or will often correspond to "k" or "g" in Japanese. Old Japanese lacked velar fricatives: Modern Japanese is derived from Old Japanese, which descended in most cases from a Proto-Japonic */p/. Mandarin "z" will often correspond to Japanese "j"; these are also changes in Chinese. Thus, Mandarin hànzì (漢字) corresponds to Japanese kanji, hànwén (漢文, Chinese written language) to kanbun, and zuìhòu (最後, last) to saigo.

Read more about this topic:  Sino-Japanese Vocabulary

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