I have been reading with interest the latest entries shared by Hong on the 本字 for a wide selection of common Minnan words, e.g. "hard-working", "window", etc. In particular, Hong's information has broken quite a number of my old assumptions about the 本字 for many words which I thought were common with Yue and Mandarin.
This has prompted me to re-evaluate my first thread in this forum, i.e. "preserving Hokkien in written form". It begs an important question: How far do the 本字 for Minnan words diverge from the mainstream of written Chinese? By mainstream, I am obviously not referring to modern Mandarin, as the historical divergence is way too great. At best, the most suitable "mainstream" yardstick to refer to would have to be Middle Chinese (初唐 period), or maybe even as far back as Old Chinese (商 or 周 period).
The problem I am addressing is this: Do the 本字 for Minnan words by-and-large have common origins with Old/Middle Chinese, and if so, to what extent? As Hong has pointed out, even the word 窗 for window - a common word in Old Chinese - is not used in Minnan, but rather an obscure character 广+同. Many other examples exist. They serve to suggest that even among Chinese dialects, Min may have genetically diverged much, much further than the other dialects - to the extent that any common connection to Old Chinese at any traceable stage in time is now lost or obscured beyond trace.
So, the question is this: Is there a point in the history of the Chinese language where the 本字 for these Minnan words were historically the original meanings (or even contextual meanings) of these characters? Or is Minnan a special case of Chinese dialects where it is not possible to study the 本字 for its words purely from a 漢文 angle (like Vietnamese chu-nom 字南)?
The above question begs a more "taboo" question - If so, then should the 本字 for Minnan words therefore be analysed from the angle of a pseudo-Chinese language, instead of a 100% Chinese-originated language?
This would then suggest that literary and colloquial Minnan (wendu/baidu, if you like) are linguistically very far apart - with literary Minnan bearing more "漢文" characteristics, being bound to the rules of 文言. Could this therefore be the reason for the special case of Minnan having a large percentage of its words having wendu/baidu readings, in order to accomodate the connection with 漢文? One can draw parallels with Japanese - 山 is pronounced either as "san" (Onyomi pronunciation) or "yama" (Kunyomi pronunciation).
In fact, in some ways one could even go so far as to suggest that Minnan could be liguistically as distant (or even more distant in some cases!) from mainstream Chinese is as Japanese. A simple way to test this is to pick up any Japanese newspaper or magazine, and pick out the Kanji phrases. It is not difficult to discover that there are many terms preserved in Kanji that match standard Chinese, but where totally different words are used in Minnan.
A curious, and somewhat controversial insight, I am aware. Just sharing my thoughts for tonight out loud.
Regards,
Mark
Connection between Min and "mainstream Chinese"?
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hong
Mark,
I can't agree with you at all.The weakness for you and everyone in this forum is not study enough old text and other chinese dialects.Every chinese dialect has some words from minor race in China.You can see very strange grammar and words from other dialect as well.
Hakka say 電事 instead of normal 電話.
先生is 妓女in shanghai ,isn't that beyond the normal usage in Chinese hanzi.
山西晉語---美得太=好得很﹐美得太太=好極了﹐This is too strange.
As long as we 漢語方言大辭典/現代漢語大辭典,we will know that minnan is nothing special.Every dialect in North Chines has ancient words like min langauges as well,this is confirmed by Porf.Li who had changed his mind about this recently.
I can't agree with you at all.The weakness for you and everyone in this forum is not study enough old text and other chinese dialects.Every chinese dialect has some words from minor race in China.You can see very strange grammar and words from other dialect as well.
Hakka say 電事 instead of normal 電話.
先生is 妓女in shanghai ,isn't that beyond the normal usage in Chinese hanzi.
山西晉語---美得太=好得很﹐美得太太=好極了﹐This is too strange.
As long as we 漢語方言大辭典/現代漢語大辭典,we will know that minnan is nothing special.Every dialect in North Chines has ancient words like min langauges as well,this is confirmed by Porf.Li who had changed his mind about this recently.
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hong
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hong
Here is a web site with papers from a council.I don't know how long it will be online,we had better print out papers we are interested as soon as possible
www.pu.edu.tw/~chinese/sou/paper.htm
www.pu.edu.tw/~chinese/sou/paper.htm
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Sim
Hi Mark,
>> In fact, in some ways one could even go so far as to suggest that
>> Minnan could be linguistically as distant (or even more distant in some
>> cases!) from mainstream Chinese is as Japanese.
Wow, YOU'RE BRAVE
.
What an amazingly clear-sighted and well-formulated thesis! Hmmm... It's certainly something for me to think about for the next few months (years...?).
My first reaction (gut reaction) is that I'd end up concluding that Hokkien definitely is Han etc, but I love the question you're posing.
These are my thoughts:
It's much more obvious that this model fits Japanese BECAUSE:
1) Japanese uses single (traditionally monosyllabic) characters to transcribe multi-syllabic native-Japanese morphemes, where (in addition)
2) The individual syllables are non-tonal.
This makes it very acceptable (indeed, self-evident) that Japanese is not a variant of a Han language.
But, we're saddled with the fact that Hokkien DIDN'T do that. Instead, it has:
1) Many multi-syllabic words (many of obscure origin), where
2) Each syllable DOES have tone, so
3) These (*perhaps* very 'non-Han') syllables (together forming a very non-Han polysyllabic word) could then be much more easily "forced" into the 'Han model', i.e. written with one character, perhaps with a character made up based on the various principles available for the creation of new characters.
This then helps to disguise the degree of independence of Hokkien from the other languages / dialects of the Han family.
I'd like to think about this for a while, but I couldn't resist sharing my thoughts with you, and congratulating you on the formulating your idea in the first place.
Regards,
Sim.
>> In fact, in some ways one could even go so far as to suggest that
>> Minnan could be linguistically as distant (or even more distant in some
>> cases!) from mainstream Chinese is as Japanese.
Wow, YOU'RE BRAVE
.What an amazingly clear-sighted and well-formulated thesis! Hmmm... It's certainly something for me to think about for the next few months (years...?).
My first reaction (gut reaction) is that I'd end up concluding that Hokkien definitely is Han etc, but I love the question you're posing.
These are my thoughts:
It's much more obvious that this model fits Japanese BECAUSE:
1) Japanese uses single (traditionally monosyllabic) characters to transcribe multi-syllabic native-Japanese morphemes, where (in addition)
2) The individual syllables are non-tonal.
This makes it very acceptable (indeed, self-evident) that Japanese is not a variant of a Han language.
But, we're saddled with the fact that Hokkien DIDN'T do that. Instead, it has:
1) Many multi-syllabic words (many of obscure origin), where
2) Each syllable DOES have tone, so
3) These (*perhaps* very 'non-Han') syllables (together forming a very non-Han polysyllabic word) could then be much more easily "forced" into the 'Han model', i.e. written with one character, perhaps with a character made up based on the various principles available for the creation of new characters.
This then helps to disguise the degree of independence of Hokkien from the other languages / dialects of the Han family.
I'd like to think about this for a while, but I couldn't resist sharing my thoughts with you, and congratulating you on the formulating your idea in the first place.
Regards,
Sim.
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hong
Hi, Hong,hong wrote: Every chinese dialect has some words from minor race in China. You can see very strange grammar and words from other dialect as well.
Noted. For instance, I recall you mentioning in another thread that the 本字 for 'lim' (drink) is 啉. I checked 康熙字典 and found that the definition for it is given as 飲畢曰啉, i.e. the 'drink' definition is consistent. Ironically, the definitions for 喝 in 康熙字典 only refer to 聲 'sound' or 'voice' (the word is normally used for 'to shout'), but not 'drink'. So, one could say that in the case of the word 'drink', 喝 is even more strange than 啉. We tend to take 喝 for granted as 'normal', given the current ascendency of Mandarin.
My focus for this discussion is not the 'strange' words for more complex terms, because in those cases it is understandable if different terms are used for different dialects (even for something as seemingly basic as 'drink'). But for a fundamental term like 'man/person', it is interesting to observe that such a complicated Hanzi as 'lang' 儂 should supercede 人, especially when the radical 人 is part of 儂.
Of course, one can also cite similar examples in Yue dialect. The most obvious one that comes to mind is the term for 'small'. Yue, Min and Hakka all use 'sai/se/sE' 細 respectively, instead of the more basic (and obvious) 小. Even in Mandarin, 怕 can be arguably treated as a 'strange' dialect word for 'fear' in the Northern dialect, rather than 恐 and 畏 more commonly found in 文言.
If the number of 'strange words' in the various dialects (with reference to each other, or to wenyan) can be used to gauge the divergence of a dialect from Old Chinese, would it be still fair to say that the degree of divergence of Min is no different from any of the other dialects - even the northern dialects like Wu and Gan?
Regards,
Mark
PS. Sim - Thanks again for your hearty and generous compliments! I think you will be happy to know that with support from you, my fervour to contribute more of my thoughts and insights (even if some of them may be incorrect!) are constantly re-energised.
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hong
I didn't say benzi for drink is kou 口+林 because the meaning is stupid and slow.We just borrow the hanzi although the meaning doesn't right.That is why minnan dict in 1800 gives another word. 喝 in 說文解字 didn't mean drink but only sound。I think it is surely a Tang period change like the word 吃 which only has a meaning of 說話結巴 in 說文解字 。People use 食 until Tang period as mentioned by 王力。
I think 人 is called 農 in ancient wu is because of there are a lot of farmers in the south but not the north.
Languages in Northern China only been called as one langauge北方話 started in Song Period.In dict like 經典釋文,there are called as 4 different languages .We can read that people in beijing cannot understand 陝西 language nowadays。This is the same case for wu languages.
Min languages are a bit ancient in term of vowel/consonant like no f consonant but as for vocabulary/grammar,every dialect in China is as old as well.We can find words from 詩經 in every chinese dialect .
I think 人 is called 農 in ancient wu is because of there are a lot of farmers in the south but not the north.
Languages in Northern China only been called as one langauge北方話 started in Song Period.In dict like 經典釋文,there are called as 4 different languages .We can read that people in beijing cannot understand 陝西 language nowadays。This is the same case for wu languages.
Min languages are a bit ancient in term of vowel/consonant like no f consonant but as for vocabulary/grammar,every dialect in China is as old as well.We can find words from 詩經 in every chinese dialect .
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hong