Hi! can anyone come out with a good explanation for the origins of Hokkien word for 'one' ( that is ' tsit')? i.e how it came to be relatively different from the normal yi or yat or yit etc.
....this seems to be a uniquely Min phenomenon. at least i dun know any other dialect groups who have this.
on the other hand, i know tibetan has somethin very similar (i ve heard myself) : tsi
Hokkien word for 'one'
-
Ken
Re: Hokkien word for 'one'
Hi,
It depends on the context u use the word 'one'. If you are expressing a numerical description such as 'one person' ('tsit gei lang'), 'one car'(tsit teng cia') , then 'tsit' is used. If you are doing a count (i.e. one, two, three) or saying the phrase 'the year 1990', then 'yit' is used instead.
Hokkien is kind of a different from a dialect like cantonese in that the same chinese character can be read differently in different situation. A good example is 'ren' (Mandarin for human or person). A normal expression like 'this person' is read 'lang' in hokkien. But for the mandarin word 'ren ming' (people), 'ren' is read as 'jin'. Such features are common in Hokkien. I wonder if it exists in other dialects.
It depends on the context u use the word 'one'. If you are expressing a numerical description such as 'one person' ('tsit gei lang'), 'one car'(tsit teng cia') , then 'tsit' is used. If you are doing a count (i.e. one, two, three) or saying the phrase 'the year 1990', then 'yit' is used instead.
Hokkien is kind of a different from a dialect like cantonese in that the same chinese character can be read differently in different situation. A good example is 'ren' (Mandarin for human or person). A normal expression like 'this person' is read 'lang' in hokkien. But for the mandarin word 'ren ming' (people), 'ren' is read as 'jin'. Such features are common in Hokkien. I wonder if it exists in other dialects.
-
PC
Re: Hokkien word for 'one'
From my understanding of Hokkien, specifically Taiwanese, I would spell the word "one" as "jit" rather than "tsit." I think the sound of "jit" is pretty close to the sound of "yit."
-
xxxx
Re: Hokkien word for 'one'
perhaps i didn't phrase my question too well...
all the other dialects Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka ... those i know so far has 'one' starting with 'y' or 'i' sound
Min is the only one , the colloquial version with 'one' start with the 'ts' or 'j' sound
my question is .. is this an innovation on Min dialect grp s part from original chinese ... or is it a relic from antiquity?
the reason i m asking is because i know Tibetan (distantly related to chinese according to xperts) has this 'ts' or 'j' initial for 'one' as well
ie. Tib 'one' = tsyi
regards
all the other dialects Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka ... those i know so far has 'one' starting with 'y' or 'i' sound
Min is the only one , the colloquial version with 'one' start with the 'ts' or 'j' sound
my question is .. is this an innovation on Min dialect grp s part from original chinese ... or is it a relic from antiquity?
the reason i m asking is because i know Tibetan (distantly related to chinese according to xperts) has this 'ts' or 'j' initial for 'one' as well
ie. Tib 'one' = tsyi
regards
-
Aurelio
Re: Hokkien word for 'one'
Hi X^4:
I think you got a good point there, the 'ts' or 'j' (or 'ch' for that matter) initial is really strange, because there is no other Hokkien word that has a /tsh/ sound where Mandarin has a /y/ - at least not any that I know of. Usually, it's either a 'zh' in Mandarin (chi - zhi 'only', chin - zhen 'really') or sometimes a 'sh' (chioh - shi 'stone', chiu" - shang 'up'). The Mandarin y-initial, on the other hand, usually corresponds to a 'y' in Hokkien (like yikeng 'already') or sometimes to a 'g' (like in gi 'justice', or gi 'ought'). 'y' /[j] -> /tsh, dzh/ does not seem to be a regular development in Hokkien (as it would be, e.g., from Latin to French).
Even more strange is the tone of chit 'one'. If I am not all mistaken, the literary version 'it' has the exact opposite tone of 'chit' (i.e. pronounced like chit 'this'), whereas usually the tone of the literary and the colloquial pronunciation are the same (take kau and kiu 'nine', for example) - anybody please correct me if I'm wrong here (angmo - not good with tones
).
So, since both the initial and the tone do not fit, the most likely reason would be that chit and it are NOT the same word, even though they look pretty close at first sight (on the other hand, e.g. Latin habe-re and German habe-n (Engl. have) are not genetically the same word either, although they have the same meaning and sound very much alike).
It could, of course, be a fossil form retained from some earlier stage of the language, possibly dating back even to Sino-Tibetan times, but then I would at least expect the tone to change in the regular way. I think it's more likely that this is a relic from a Pre-Han language or a different Han-root (pretty much like most dialects have shi, si etc. for 'to be' whereas Cantonese has 'hai'). I have just found, however, a link to a Sino-Tibetan dictionary project:
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/stedt/index.html
Maybe somebody there has already done some research on this?
Good Luck,
Aurelio
I think you got a good point there, the 'ts' or 'j' (or 'ch' for that matter) initial is really strange, because there is no other Hokkien word that has a /tsh/ sound where Mandarin has a /y/ - at least not any that I know of. Usually, it's either a 'zh' in Mandarin (chi - zhi 'only', chin - zhen 'really') or sometimes a 'sh' (chioh - shi 'stone', chiu" - shang 'up'). The Mandarin y-initial, on the other hand, usually corresponds to a 'y' in Hokkien (like yikeng 'already') or sometimes to a 'g' (like in gi 'justice', or gi 'ought'). 'y' /[j] -> /tsh, dzh/ does not seem to be a regular development in Hokkien (as it would be, e.g., from Latin to French).
Even more strange is the tone of chit 'one'. If I am not all mistaken, the literary version 'it' has the exact opposite tone of 'chit' (i.e. pronounced like chit 'this'), whereas usually the tone of the literary and the colloquial pronunciation are the same (take kau and kiu 'nine', for example) - anybody please correct me if I'm wrong here (angmo - not good with tones
).So, since both the initial and the tone do not fit, the most likely reason would be that chit and it are NOT the same word, even though they look pretty close at first sight (on the other hand, e.g. Latin habe-re and German habe-n (Engl. have) are not genetically the same word either, although they have the same meaning and sound very much alike).
It could, of course, be a fossil form retained from some earlier stage of the language, possibly dating back even to Sino-Tibetan times, but then I would at least expect the tone to change in the regular way. I think it's more likely that this is a relic from a Pre-Han language or a different Han-root (pretty much like most dialects have shi, si etc. for 'to be' whereas Cantonese has 'hai'). I have just found, however, a link to a Sino-Tibetan dictionary project:
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/stedt/index.html
Maybe somebody there has already done some research on this?
Good Luck,
Aurelio
-
PC
Re: Hokkien word for 'one'
I really don't see why yi and jit is not related. If you think about the two letters "i" (or "y") and "j," you know that these two sounds are related. It is comparable to the relationship between h, b, and p or k and g. In fact, if you know Latin, there used to be only the letter "i" and no "j." Later on, English speakers gradually changed the sound from "i" to "j." That's why the letters look similar. "Julius Caesar," for example, was originally spelled and pronounced as "Iulius Caesar." Therefore, I don't see why the Chinese language might have changed it's ound gradually from "j" to "i." In fact, when I look up CCDICT, the character for "one" in Cantonese is actually spelled with a "j" even though it sounds more like a "y"
-
PC
Re: Hokkien word for 'one'
I really don't see why yi and jit are not related. If you think about the two letters "i" (or "y") and "j," you know that these two sounds are related. It is comparable to the relationship between h, b, and p or k and g. In fact, if you know Latin, there used to be only the letter "i" and no "j." Later on, English speakers gradually changed the sound from "i" to "j." That's why the letters look similar. "Julius Caesar," for example, was originally spelled and pronounced as "Iulius Caesar." Therefore, I don't see why the Chinese language might have changed it's ound gradually from "j" to "i." In fact, when I look up CCDICT, the character for "one" in Cantonese is actually spelled with a "j" even though it sounds more like a "y"
-
Aurelio
Re: Hokkien word for 'one'
Hi PC:
The reason that you see "jat" in CCDICT is that you have selected Jyutping as romanisation system (at the bottom of the page). If you change that to IPA you will get "jet" and if you click on Yale it becomes "yat" - the pronunciation is of course the same and has the same initial sound as "yet" in English or "yao" in Mandarin (hanyu pinyin romanisation). Unfortunately, we have this abundance of mutually incompatible transcription systems with their p's and b's and y's and j's depending on whether it was a French, a German, an Englishman or a Chinese who came up with it.
Now, if we forget about romanisation and just look at the sound, Mandarin-speakers and Cantonese-speakers alike pronounce the character "--" with the same initial as English "yet", pretty much like the Romans pronounced the first letter in Iulius, iustus, ianuarius, etc. Somewhen in the middle ages this sound changed to what we have today in Italian: Giulio, Giusto, Gianuario, French: Jule, juste, janvier and hence English: Julius and July, just and January, all pronounced with something very unlike "y" namely a voiced "sh" with or without (French) a "d"-sound in front of it.
Like you said, this change is nothing unusual in languages and we have that in Mandarin, too, though only after another consonant (I mean the transition from older Beiking to Beijing, older kiu to jiu etc.). My point was: "--" is the ONLY character which has a "tsh" sound in Hokkien (colloquial pronunciation, not the literary one) and a "y" sound in Mandarin. If you look at the transition from i -> dzh in Italian or from ki -> ji in Mandarin you will see that these rules apply to hundreds or even thousands of examples. Same for the rule <"y" in Mandarin is "y" in Hokkien>. "--" is the only exception (unless you find a second one, then please let me know).
Now, if something like this happens, there is usually a good reason. Let me give you some examples from the Romance and the Germanic languages: "Dios" God in Spanish should have lost it's final "s", but people kept it for religious reasons. "You are" (ni shi ...) should have become "tu e" in Italian, but this was replaced by "tu sei" as it might otherwise be confused with "il e" - he is; the reason that this did not happen in French is that you can't omit the personal pronouns in French but you can't in Italian). German "Keller" comes from latin cellarium and should have been "Zeller" with a "ts" if it had been imported in the Middle Ages (like Zelle from cella etc.). In fact, however, the word was already imported during the early Roman occupation and kept the K-sound which was then the standard Roman pronunciation for "c" (same for Kaiser "emperor" from Caesar). What I want to say by this is: If a word seems to break a transformation rule, there's usually a good reason behind it, it does not just simply happen.
Sometimes this reason is a more complicated rule which only applies to a few words (like Keller, Kaiser), sometimes it's something particular about the usage or the history of this one word. What makes "chit" look really suspicious to me is that BOTH the initial and the tone are wrong. Let me take an example from Cantonese: A lot of people use the same character as Mandarin "shi" to write Cantonese "hai". Now if I use all my creative wits, I should be able to give you a pretty convincing explanation why an older Chinese si should become hai in Cantonese. The fact is, it's just a different root which does have a character of its own (xi4 in mandarin, the 15th character under xi in CCDICT). Same for Hokkien chiah (eat) which most people write with Mandarin "chi" although in fact it's a different root again (shi2 in Mandarin, sek in Cantonese). I have found that it's a pretty good test for the relationship between a Hokkien word and its Mandarin or Cantonese counterparts to check if the tone fits.
Therefore my conclusion that it's most likely either a Han-root different from middle chinese "iat" or a non Han-word. Since it's very unlikely that somebody would import just one numeral from another language (and not the whole set), a non-Han root would most likely be a relic from possible pre-Han times. Such discussions can get very hairy, however, as there is little data and lots of speculation. If you want to have a look at a similar case in Latin, check out the following link:
http://www.avalon.net/~gouwen/P_latin-bos.html
I should add that we have much better information on the italic and non-italic languages in pre-roman Italy than we have on early South-China.
Best regards
Aurelio
The reason that you see "jat" in CCDICT is that you have selected Jyutping as romanisation system (at the bottom of the page). If you change that to IPA you will get "jet" and if you click on Yale it becomes "yat" - the pronunciation is of course the same and has the same initial sound as "yet" in English or "yao" in Mandarin (hanyu pinyin romanisation). Unfortunately, we have this abundance of mutually incompatible transcription systems with their p's and b's and y's and j's depending on whether it was a French, a German, an Englishman or a Chinese who came up with it.
Now, if we forget about romanisation and just look at the sound, Mandarin-speakers and Cantonese-speakers alike pronounce the character "--" with the same initial as English "yet", pretty much like the Romans pronounced the first letter in Iulius, iustus, ianuarius, etc. Somewhen in the middle ages this sound changed to what we have today in Italian: Giulio, Giusto, Gianuario, French: Jule, juste, janvier and hence English: Julius and July, just and January, all pronounced with something very unlike "y" namely a voiced "sh" with or without (French) a "d"-sound in front of it.
Like you said, this change is nothing unusual in languages and we have that in Mandarin, too, though only after another consonant (I mean the transition from older Beiking to Beijing, older kiu to jiu etc.). My point was: "--" is the ONLY character which has a "tsh" sound in Hokkien (colloquial pronunciation, not the literary one) and a "y" sound in Mandarin. If you look at the transition from i -> dzh in Italian or from ki -> ji in Mandarin you will see that these rules apply to hundreds or even thousands of examples. Same for the rule <"y" in Mandarin is "y" in Hokkien>. "--" is the only exception (unless you find a second one, then please let me know).
Now, if something like this happens, there is usually a good reason. Let me give you some examples from the Romance and the Germanic languages: "Dios" God in Spanish should have lost it's final "s", but people kept it for religious reasons. "You are" (ni shi ...) should have become "tu e" in Italian, but this was replaced by "tu sei" as it might otherwise be confused with "il e" - he is; the reason that this did not happen in French is that you can't omit the personal pronouns in French but you can't in Italian). German "Keller" comes from latin cellarium and should have been "Zeller" with a "ts" if it had been imported in the Middle Ages (like Zelle from cella etc.). In fact, however, the word was already imported during the early Roman occupation and kept the K-sound which was then the standard Roman pronunciation for "c" (same for Kaiser "emperor" from Caesar). What I want to say by this is: If a word seems to break a transformation rule, there's usually a good reason behind it, it does not just simply happen.
Sometimes this reason is a more complicated rule which only applies to a few words (like Keller, Kaiser), sometimes it's something particular about the usage or the history of this one word. What makes "chit" look really suspicious to me is that BOTH the initial and the tone are wrong. Let me take an example from Cantonese: A lot of people use the same character as Mandarin "shi" to write Cantonese "hai". Now if I use all my creative wits, I should be able to give you a pretty convincing explanation why an older Chinese si should become hai in Cantonese. The fact is, it's just a different root which does have a character of its own (xi4 in mandarin, the 15th character under xi in CCDICT). Same for Hokkien chiah (eat) which most people write with Mandarin "chi" although in fact it's a different root again (shi2 in Mandarin, sek in Cantonese). I have found that it's a pretty good test for the relationship between a Hokkien word and its Mandarin or Cantonese counterparts to check if the tone fits.
Therefore my conclusion that it's most likely either a Han-root different from middle chinese "iat" or a non Han-word. Since it's very unlikely that somebody would import just one numeral from another language (and not the whole set), a non-Han root would most likely be a relic from possible pre-Han times. Such discussions can get very hairy, however, as there is little data and lots of speculation. If you want to have a look at a similar case in Latin, check out the following link:
http://www.avalon.net/~gouwen/P_latin-bos.html
I should add that we have much better information on the italic and non-italic languages in pre-roman Italy than we have on early South-China.
Best regards
Aurelio
-
Niuc
Re: Hokkien word for 'one'
I am not sure whether 'cit' and 'it' sharing one word/character or not but there is an obvious difference: 'cit' is a cardinal number and 'it' is an ordinal number.
'cit' (1) and 'neng'/'no' (2) are cardinal numbers to count quantity, not order.
'it' (1) and 'di'/'ji' (2) are ordinal numbers to indicate position in order, not to count quantity.
3,4...9 have same words/pronunciations for both cardinal & ordinal numbers.
eg:
'cit tiam cing' -> one hour ; 'neng tiam cing' -> two hours
'it tiam' -> one o'clock ; 'di tiam' -> two o'clock
'tei it tiam cing' -> first hour ; 'tei di tiam cing' -> second hour
Aurelio, it's true that 'cit' and 'it' have different tones. Tone of 'cit' is the sandhi tone of 'it', is it why you called them opposite tones?
'cit' (1) and 'neng'/'no' (2) are cardinal numbers to count quantity, not order.
'it' (1) and 'di'/'ji' (2) are ordinal numbers to indicate position in order, not to count quantity.
3,4...9 have same words/pronunciations for both cardinal & ordinal numbers.
eg:
'cit tiam cing' -> one hour ; 'neng tiam cing' -> two hours
'it tiam' -> one o'clock ; 'di tiam' -> two o'clock
'tei it tiam cing' -> first hour ; 'tei di tiam cing' -> second hour
Aurelio, it's true that 'cit' and 'it' have different tones. Tone of 'cit' is the sandhi tone of 'it', is it why you called them opposite tones?