The earliest Min Language ... ...

Discussions on the Hokkien (Minnan) language.
hong

Post by hong »

If we want to say experts are wrong ,we need to read a lot .So many things already been answered by them. Most experts agree there are only 19 consonants in 上古 period.minnan with 15 isn't too bad.
minnan 知组读同端组 like 猪,除,抽,
minnan 章组读同端组 like 召,注,唇,振
above words are older in minnan compare to yue which has consonant almost the same with mandarin
泥娘合流,歌韵 ,etc,buy books and read .I can't help
niuc

Post by niuc »

Hi Hong

Thanks for all the info. Btw why Minnan/Hokkien is perceived as having only 15 consonants? There are 17 consonants in E-mng Hokkien , right?
hong

Post by hong »

Niu,
I think you already knew the answer long time ago.
ng,n,m is not consonants in minnan like teochew,fuzhou,minbei,putian,hainan.They can have words like mang ,nuoi,muoi,nuai,nguai,nguoh,moh,mieh,mEh,moyh,moung.
Only Minnan has this so called 聲母鼻音限制 。n,m,ng must have nn at the back although dict are very lazy about this.
ng and m stand alone is not under this rule.
How can we explain this compare to teochew ,I think even 李如龍 cannot explain this.Can we say minnan didn't change much compare to other min languages?
niuc

Post by niuc »

Hi Hong

Thanks for the info. I did read your posting before, that according to experts/linguists m, n, ng in Hokkien must have nasal ending (nasal vowels or -ng) but I was not aware that that's the reason not to count them as consonants.

Here I am not arguing with you :wink: but just raising some questions on how those experts come to this conclusion. I am not a linguist but personally I find this reason unconvincing.

Aren't all vowels automatically nasalized (or semi-nasalized) if the initials are nasal [i.e. m, n, ng]? May be it's only my own perception but I feel that in other languages it's also true, e.g.:
vowel "a" in "ma" [Mandarin] is pronounced as a nasal vowel
vowel "i" in "me" [English] is also [semi-]nasalized
vowel "u" in "muka" [Indonesian: face] is also [semi-]nasalized
etc..

If m, n, ng in other languages are considered as consonants, how can it not be in Hokkien? Are they consonants in Teochew? Can Teochew or Fuzhou pronounce vowels with nasal initials without the vowels being nasalized?

I read in your previous posting e.g. they say that ma2 [literary reading for horse] came from initial 'b' + nasal a, so 'b' turned into 'm'. So they say no initial 'm' in Hokkien. I am not an expert, just that personally I really don't see any reason not to give 'm' its "right" :) as initial in Hokkien. Even if it came from 'b', this doesn't eradicate the fact that initial 'm' exists in Hokkien.

Kindly enlighten me & forgive my ignorance about this :oops:
hong

Post by hong »

I just send a file to your email =minnan is 十五個音位產生二十二個聲母。There is another article in Prof.Ang web site.
The theory to think about is the nn at the back. Try say bann ,is it possible?b is almost lost here.That is why they say b,l,g,在鼻化韻前會受影響讀成m,n,ng.
b,l,g 塞音比較弱﹐相當于發m,n,ng 去掉鼻音而成的音。This explaination is very important although I can't give any example about no nasal sound in m,n,ng at this moment.I think there is thesis to download about this in english from taiwan university.
Teochew has dict called 潮汕十八音﹐of course they have m,ng,n,as their consonant in any kind of formation like nang.
I will come back later.
hong

Post by hong »

I just sent you a very new article published five months ago.廈門話的 mb,md(l),mg聲母。It can explained why above 相當于m,ng,n 去掉.See b 往往跟m音混....
Try png and bng,piann and biann.
bng and biann can change our sound sounded like m but not png and piann。
hong

Post by hong »

I am not sure 媽 ma in mandarin and mann 媽 in minnan have exactly the same sound or not. I don't think it is the same sound.Something follow Nasal consonant must be nasal?I will be back later.
hong

Post by hong »

I think the book says b,l,g 相當于發m,ng,n去掉鼻音 means there are weak m,n,ng in front of them
hong

Post by hong »

sorry,my stupid mistake about bh in teochew.It is just spelling from china which have symbols like putonghus
niuc

Post by niuc »

Hi Hong

Thanks a lot for those articles! :D I'll get back after reading them.
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