Benzi/Original character

[xng]

Hi xng:

That is basically what I use as "and" now. But I am not very sure if 佮 is the 本字, let me share with you why I doubt.

If we try to relate to 文白異讀 in Hokkien, we will find that many 文讀 with ao or iao match with a in 白讀, like: 教, 骹, 較, 撽, 鉸, 孢, 撓, 炒, 鬧 and so on...... Some people even say 樵 is the actual word for cha 柴. Would ka actually be a kao or kiao in 文讀 ? I am just not sure, but 佮 is indeed what I use today.

aokh,

I must apologise !! 佮 is the wrong character, the original character should be 共 'Kann' (the final nasal sound is somehow lost or very faint other examples are 青 also has very faint nasal sound or lost)

I remember listening to a lot of cantonese love songs that use 我共你 that is also used in classical chinese instead of Mandarin 我和你.

樵 has a closer sound than 柴. I just saw a taiwanese hokkien show where the actor pronounced woodcutter 樵夫as C'a Hu.

焦 - Ta has the same vowel as 樵

柴 should be pronounced as C'ay eg. 買 is Bay where mandarin is Mai, cantonese is maai.

Therefore C'ai in mandarin/C'aai in cantonese should be C'ay in hokkien and not C'a.

[aokh1979]

共 might make sense. But do make sure we all have a right logic when it comes to looking for the "correct" or "reasonable" character. Characters are invented to record what we speak, so...... Using 共 or 佮 or even 及 to record "and", should all work well. Of course 佮 seems a little strange to most people...... Hm......

[xng]

共 might make sense. But do make sure we all have a right logic when it comes to looking for the "correct" or "reasonable" character. Characters are invented to record what we speak, so...... Using 共 or 佮 or even 及 to record "and", should all work well. Of course 佮 seems a little strange to most people...... Hm......

佮 - Tone is wrong.

及 - Pronounced Kip and not Ka.

共 - Tone is right and meaning is correct except for missing nasal ending. But this is common in other characters. Classical chinese use quite a lot of 共.

[aokh1979]

I still dun have an answer to that, but I know characters are invented to record what we speak. I guess dictionaries are just references. 共 does make sense, of course.

及 is pronounced khap in Cantonese though, and it does carry "and" meaning today in Mandarin. There are more common characters that we accept change of tone like 雨, 想 and so on. I think 及 can be another candidate, 佮 is less common...... ^^

[xng]

I

及 is pronounced khap in Cantonese though, and it does carry "and" meaning today in Mandarin.

Most vowel with 'i' in hokkien ends with 'a' in standard cantonese eg. 新 'San' whereas hakka, hokkien, mandarin pronounce as 'Sin'.

But non standard cantonese eg. taishanese pronounce it closer to hokkien ie. preserve the 'i' vowel. So the original middle chinese sound is 'Kip' or 'Khip' and not 'Khap'.

This can be seen in taishanese, hakka and hokkien so 及 is definitely not the correct character due to its sound and also entering tone .

[aokh1979]

I am not sure if I make sense, just to clarify a few things.

I do not know, and do not believe that Hokkien we speak now is exactly what it sounded in middle Chinese. Every language might have carried some left-over from middle Chinese. Hainanese or Taishanese might have things older than those in Hokkien or Cantonese, not all but something. Do I sound reasonable ?

The reason I quoted 及 because of below:

1. In previous posts we did discuss about ka with an entering sound because Taiwanese borrows sound from 甲, but why is the entering sound being denied here ?
2. In Japanese 及 is pronounced as きゅう and in Hainanese, the ka seems to be kiau in those contexts.

共 does indeed make sense but 及 should not be turned down immediately. I just try to keep an open mind because both of them may carry a slightly different meaning.

[Ah-bin]

This can be seen in taishanese, hakka and hokkien so 及 is definitely not the correct character due to its sound and also entering tone .

xng you need to learn two things before you discuss this further:

1) "Entering tone" refers to the tone class. 及 is an entering tone word. I assume you are meaning the -p doesn't correspond to the final glottal stop -h. It does. Only the vowel is a bit suspect.

2) There are two kinds of Middle Chinese, early and late - 不宜混為一談. Hokkien vernacaular readings are from the Early Middle Chinese (EMC) Cantonese descends from Late Middle Chinese, and therefore is only good to compare with the thak-chhEh-im in Hokkien, but needs to be used very carefully if you want to make comparisons with the vernacular stratum.

Although I disagree with many of Aokh's proposed original characters (you're never going to convince me of 昧!), I think 及 actually makes a lot of sense. Also the Early Middle Chinese stratum in Hokkien is probably the result of dialect contact and mixing, so there are many exceptions to rhyming rules and correspondences with other Sinitic languages. Here are three arguments for 及 as the original character for kah:

First:
One of the universal characteristics of the EMC stratum is that the finals of the entering tones in -t -p -k were all elided to the glottal stop -h. I'm sure Aokh is arguing that this is the EMC borrowing, so the -h does in fact correspond to final -p in Cantonese and the literary (Late Middle Chinese) stratum.
(Conversely, function words are particularly prone to phonetic shift, so the lack of a final -ng if the character really was 共 would not be so unbelievable)

Second:
Sinitic languages contain many examples of verbs that have lost their original meanings and become grammatical particles. One is 以 which used to mean "to take". It is by no means unlikely that the meaning "to meet with" became "in addition to" (which it has) and finally "and/with".

Third:
The 及 in the Chu Nom script often stands for gặp (a vernacular word) and kịp is the Sino-Vietnamese (LMC) reading of the character. Sometimes the "vernacular" words in Vietnamese are actually just earlier borrowings from EMC and therefore predate Cantonese. Like the EMC stratum in Min, there is evidence for dialect mixture and borrowing at different periods.


Having said so, I would use 共 instead of 及 for the same reason as I use 這 instead of 之 to write "this" in Mandarin, because it has a history of centuries of use.

[aokh1979]

Although I disagree with many of Aokh's proposed original characters (you're never going to convince me of 昧!), I think 及 actually makes a lot of sense.

Is somebody declaring war here ?

Friend, 昧 is what I use to document Penang Hokkien [bē] to differentiate from 未 [buē], it's the proposed character, not proposed original character.

Ultimate goal of mine is to document the vernacular of Penang Hokkien. Quite a number of my proposed characters are not original. If we stick to 本字 - we may end up nowhere because characters are invented to record spoken language, and spoken languages shift. If a word is widely used in Mandarin today, how it's written will be my choice of word, at least phase 1. I want to make Penang Hokkien writable in 漢字 but I dun want to scare young people away, phase-by-phase.

[Ah-bin]

I am naughty...... and I was mistaken in thinking you meant 昧 was an original character......very fast backtrack and apology!

I also should have said "a few" characters not "many", but since you aren't claiming them as original characters to start with, I shouldn't have said it at all.

[SimL]

I do not know, and do not believe that Hokkien we speak now is exactly what it sounded in middle Chinese. ... Do I sound reasonable ?

Hi aokh,

With my limited knowledge of Chinese, I wouldn't presume to make a comment about this in particular, but, if one thinks that "Middle Chinese" is considered to be from the 8th to the 10th century, and "Old English" is considered to be from the 5th to the 12th century, and "Old English" looks like this:

Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in ġeār-dagum,
þēod-cyninga, þrym ġefrūnon,
hū ðā æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scēfing sceaþena þrēatum,
monegum mǣġþum, meodosetla oftēah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ǣrest wearð
fēasceaft funden, hē þæs frōfre ġebād,
wēox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þāh,
oðþæt him ǣġhwylc þāra ymbsittendra
ofer hronrāde hȳran scolde,
gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs gōd cyning!

then, I imagine that present day Hokkien probably sounds quite different from (how Hokkien sounded in the time of) "Middle Chinese" .

So, I think your assertion is very reasonable!