Hi! I have just read all the postings you guys discussing about monkey. I am very much impressed by your hard working in making clear the Chinese words especially as foreigners you are.
(I don’t know English well, hope you understand what I’m saying)
The word monkey is 猴 (hau6) which has a more ancient writing as箟 with a radical character犬, Cantonese phonetic symbol is (hau1). Actually 猴 should be pronounced as (hau1) but it has changed during practical uses as ages passed by. Sound changes including tones are very common and it creates sound differences between ancient and modern words. Thus, the character猴 has been widely accepted and defined as hau6 in dictionaries. However, its ancient sound is still kept in the colloquial usage of Cantonese native speakers despite most of them do not know what is the character it indicates.
Now 馬騮, 馬留 are the wrong assertion made by the public in order to match the sound (maa5 lau1). Certainly monkey has nothing to do with a horse. The correct characters for monkey are 獼猴mei4 hau6 which always come together as a word for monkey in most Chinese Dictionaries. The first character has experienced a sound change and it had once been pronounced as 馬maa5 and then changed to be maa1. It meant female monkey originally but as per widely used and implied, it appeared to mean all female animals afterwards. Nowadays, the character “mother 媽” (maa1) is also originated from 獼. According to the customary sound change in Cantonese i.e. the consonant of the first character and the vowel of the second will usually remain unchanged while the rest changes, “h” is always omitted and substituted by “l” after the vowel “aa”. So it is justified that 猴 should be sounded as hau6 when comes alone while sounded as lau1 when comes together with 獼.maa5
For the reason that the word’s sound had changed and the word pertaining to the sound seemed to have lost, the ancient Chinese created new characters to match the sound, thus in the above case, 猱 (monkey) was created . The phonetic symbol for this word is naau4 in dictionaries but in colloquial usage it pronounces as lau4 or lau1. Therefore, the word monkey should be re-defined as 獼猱 using maa5 lau1 as its citing sound and maa1 lau1 could be accepted as its colloquial sound.
By the way, let’s talk about another puzzled word “to sleep” 睏。Many Chinese dictionaries has the entry of 睏 whose original meaning is tiresome of eyes thus implies as sleepy; when using as a verb it means to sleep. Because of the different usage between Mandarin and Cantonese, the former use 睡 (shui4) to express “to sleep” while the latter use it to mean napping/ to take a nap e.g. 食飽睡一睡，好過做元帥 (means “to have a nap after having a meal is better than being an admiral” where the first 睡is a verb the second is a noun). The Cantonese has used 睏 to mean “ sleep” for very long time as early as from Ming Dynasty. Some old dictionaries has recorded this usage as the only meaning that 睏 carried。 As to the pronunciation, it was recorded as kwan3. However it should be read as fan3. As to the fact that there was no consonant “f” before Tang Dynasty, sounds of words changed during and after Tang, “f” was taken to replace some other consonants. There was no strict rules but customary. Here are some examples : 1. p. b → f, 2. gw, hw, kw →f.
For 1. 埠 bou6* →fau6,
浮 pou4→fau4*
For 2. 揮 gwan1 →fai1 / fik9(6) / fing6,
揈 gwang1*→ fang4
歡 hwan1→fun1*
虎 hwu3→fu2*
苦 kwu3→fu2*
寬 kwan1→fun1*
* = present sound marked in common dictionaries
The phonetic symbols for 睏in the dictionaries are obviously wrong and should be modified or re-defined to be fan3. P.S. 目訓 is created by Hongkongese to match the sound. There is totally not such word in Chinese at present, but if 睏’s right sound continues to be veiled, 目訓 may possibly be put into dictionary someday and thus added to the accumulated 50,000 words of Chinese characters. Then the Chinese gets more to memorize and takes longer to learn just for redundant words. The willful creation of Chinese words by the Chinese has done enough to ruin the Chinese culture, Please stop it.