43 replies to this topic

[xng]

Which is actually older? Minbei, Minnan, Minzhong, Mindong?

How did Min language group get seperated into so many varieties that are intelligible whereas the same did not happen for Hakka and Yue to such an extent?

They are NOT intelligible without prior knowledge of the sound changes.

All languages change over time but because Fujian province is mountainous, separation and non interaction between different parts of Fujian causes the languages to evolve differently.

Remember, TV only came into everybody life in 1960.

Before that , there were no TV, aeroplane, car. The only transportation were horses and boats which limited travel between different parts of Fujian.

Hopefully, with the easier travel and TV in modern times, there should be a standard for Minnan and MinDong. I think Minbei and Minzhong will die off eventually.

Edited by xng, 17 June 2011 - 11:58 PM.

[xng]

I think the vocabulary is a stronger reason for this grouping.
"Inland Min" use 豨 not 豬, 你 not 汝, 佢 not 伊.

Interesting, I thought all the Min languages use the same vocabulary and the only differences are the slightly different sounds.

Eg. Puxian uses these unique vocabulary

睏(sleep), 汝, 伊 , 緊(fast), 箸, 鼎, 飼 , 凊, 戇, 否(bad) which sets it apart from other languages such as Cantonese and Mandarin which don't use these characters for everyday use.

Look at example below:
Puxian sound (Quanzhou sound) <Taiwan sound>, only the sound changes but the vocabulary is the same.

豬 = Tü (Tɯ) <Ti>
箸 = Tü (Tɯ) <Ti>
汝 = Lü (Lɯ) <Li>

Edited by xng, 19 June 2011 - 03:57 AM.

[qrasy]

Interesting, I thought all the Min languages use the same vocabulary and the only differences are the slightly different sounds.

Minbei/Minzhong do use things like 囝 and 厝.

Eg. Puxian uses these unique vocabulary

睏(sleep), 汝, 伊 , 緊(fast), 箸, 鼎, 飼 , 凊, 戇, 否(bad) which sets it apart from other languages such as Cantonese and Mandarin which don't use these characters for everyday use.

One can expect that farther branches should have bigger divergences, and differences can (in principle) be in any aspect.

"睏 = sleep" is not that unique if you treat "睏覺 = sleep" (in Gan, Wu) to be related (Cantonese has some khw->f as in 快科苦褲 so one can see that 睏=>瞓).

豬 = Tü (Tɯ) <Ti>
箸 = Tü (Tɯ) <Ti>
汝 = Lü (Lɯ) <Li>

Fuzhou's also close, Tü, Töü, Nü.
(and if I'm not wrong, the "öü" here is, to native Fuzhou speakers, just "ü" + rising tone, i.e. it's an allophone of ü)

And recently, N-L confusion (similar to the one in Hong Kong's 懶音) is spreading in Fuzhou.

[edit:
I saw Putian's 汝 to be either Tü or Dü somewhere, I didn't invent this; different accents may also pronounce the same word differently]
[edit2:
http://www.6lib.com/...E3470185091.pdf - page 38 (3/6)]

Edited by qrasy, 19 June 2011 - 06:31 AM.

[xng]

[edit:
I saw Putian's 汝 to be either Tü or Dü somewhere, I didn't invent this; different accents may also pronounce the same word differently]
[edit2:
http://www.6lib.com/...E3470185091.pdf - page 38 (3/6)]

It's just a sound shift confusion, some puxian pronounce it as Lü and some as Tü as they sound similar to untrained ears. This is a very special unique case. But it originated from 汝.

Other more consistent initial consonant sound shift are from C (Old chinese) -> S (Middle Chinese) eg.

嬸 Cim -> Sim
食 Ciah -> Siah (literary sound in quanzhou is 'Sit')
一 Cit -> Sət


C shift to S is also seen in some Cantonese words.

嬸 - Sam
食 - Sik

Edited by xng, 19 June 2011 - 02:00 PM.

[sg_han]

If a Min variety is to survive, I reckon it will be Minnan given its influence in Taiwan and overseas chinese especially in Southeast Asia

[qrasy]

It's just a sound shift confusion, some puxian pronounce it as Lü and some as Tü as they sound similar to untrained ears. This is a very special unique case. But it originated from 汝.

Even for untrained ears, they do not really sound similar (if one is listening carefully enough to the syllable), because T vs L is a distinction in many languages.
And the, the one who quoted the /ty/ is unlikely to be someone untrained (and he would only try to pick up one syllable).

Other more consistent initial consonant sound shift are from C (Old chinese) -> S (Middle Chinese) eg.

C is not the Old Chinese pronunciation (e.g. 食 related with the *l-).
Nor is S the Middle Chinese pronunciation (it's clear from Indian and Vietnamese transcriptions).

嬸 Cim -> Sim
食 Ciah -> Siah (literary sound in quanzhou is 'Sit')
一 Cit -> Sət

S in "eat" and "one" are consistent with Fuzhouhua.
And, "one" quoted here is hardly "一" at all.
Fuzhou uses "蜀" though it's most likely just a phonetic (though it's possibly related to 獨).

Edited by qrasy, 20 June 2011 - 04:30 AM.

[xng]

And, "one" quoted here is hardly "一" at all.
Fuzhou uses "蜀" though it's most likely just a phonetic (though it's possibly related to 獨).

Puxian originated from Minnan and NOT fuzhou.

一 is pronounced as zit8 (1)(3)(4)(5)語音。(colloqual sound)

http://solution.cs.u.../dzl/lookup.php

It is consistent with the shift from C(Z) to S in other terms including

蟳 - Cim -> Sim

蜀 is pronounced as 'Siok' in puxian and not 'Sət'.
獨 is pronounced as 'Tok' in puxian too so none of these two are the original characters.

Edited by xng, 20 June 2011 - 07:30 AM.

[qrasy]

Puxian originated from Minnan and NOT fuzhou.

Sound shifts themselves don't really say about origination.
食 with s is probably just an influence from Fuzhou.

一 is pronounced as zit8 (1)(3)(4)(5)語音。(colloqual sound)

http://solution.cs.u.../dzl/lookup.php

It is consistent with the shift from C(Z) to S in other terms including

蟳 - Cim -> Sim

It might be consistent with that shift itself, but it's not in the common rules for literary-vs-colloquial pattern if it were for "一" (including the tones).
It's more like "別字" or "訓讀字".

蜀 is pronounced as 'Siok' in puxian and not 'Sət'.
獨 is pronounced as 'Tok' in puxian too so none of these two are the original characters.

That 'Siok' is just a literary reading, so is 'Tok' (both Jinbo's and twblg's dictionary records /tak/ for 獨's 白讀 but with no explanation).

None of 蜀獨一 actually fit (in terms of both consonant and rhyme) with the sound "cit".

There is a look-alike in Tibetan, gcig, but that is related to "隻" ('single' as in 隻身) instead.
(recorded to have 白 tsiah 文 tsik in twblg; though some characters do have more than 1 白讀)

Edited by qrasy, 20 June 2011 - 04:56 PM.

[xng]

What is the pronounciation for 福 in Fuzhou ? We can see how similar it is to the 'Ancient Minnan' group.

Hokkien (all 3 variants) Hok (low tone)
Puxian Hok (low tone)
Teociu ?
Hainan ?

Edited by xng, 26 June 2011 - 09:58 AM.

[qrasy]

福 (literary) is "Hok" (as written in 平話字) in Fuzhou.

F- from Late Middle Chinese (loanwords) evolves into H + rounded vowel in Fuzhou, and the rhyme is not changed much.

Edited by qrasy, 27 June 2011 - 10:19 PM.

[bloodmerchant]

福 (literary) is "Hok" (as written in 平話字) in Fuzhou.

F- from Late Middle Chinese (loanwords) evolves into H + rounded vowel in Fuzhou, and the rhyme is not changed much.

Edited by bloodmerchant, 28 June 2011 - 06:55 AM.

[xng]

There is a phrase '無路用' that seems to be unique to hokkien and puxian group, does it exist in Mindong and other chinese languages ?

Cantonese only use '無用'

[xng]

There are certain pronunciations along with distinct words in their lexicon that set Min apart from other Chinese dialects. Sometimes, Min vocabulary does share similarities to its neighbors. Although Min has its own ancient vocabulary, still there are other shared common vocabularies in Min came as a result of relative isolation from other parts of China, where such vocabulary trends in other dialects in later centuries. Often times, those conservative words are also retained in non-Min dialects.

For example, the surname 陳 is pronunced as Tan in Min Nan and as Ding in Min Dong. This pronunciation is actually a conservative pronunciation of 陳 from Old Chinese that supposedly sounded like dien, drijn, dlijn or lijn (since Old Chinese and Middle Chinese are quite confusing to reconstruct). While the descendants of Middle Chinese usually ended up having an initial value of ch- or tsh- for 陳. Wu Chinese pronounces it as Zen (Yes, Z as in English Z, not Mandarin Chinese Z), as it still retains voiced obstruents and voiced sibilants. So that is why also 茶 is pronounced as teh rather than 'cha', 'tsa' or 'zu'.

Phonology-wise:

Coastal Min (Min Nan and Min Dong) dialects tend to have 7-8 tones, while Inland Min (Min Zhong, Min Bei, Shaojiang) dialects tend to have 6 tones.

Tone sandhi systems in Min can get quite complex, which is a quality also shared with Wu.

Coastal Min (Min Nan, Min Dong) in particular lack [f-] and [v-] phonemes, and replaces them with [h-]. Also, Min Nan does have voiced initials as in Wu, but they usually came from nasal initials rather than actual voiced initials as in Wu. Inland Min does have a [f-] phoneme.

Archaic Chinese dental/alveolar retroflex initials are still retained as dentals/alveolars in some form 知 [ʈ]、徹 [ʈʰ]、澄 [ɖ] to an extent in Min, where as they are lost in other Chinese dialects, becoming sibilants like [s], [z] or sh. To compare, 端 [t]、透 [tʰ] exist in most Chinese dialects, except for (定 [d]) which is still retained in Wu, while in other dialects, it became [t], including Min.

Min is largely unaffected by the late 19th century trends that tend to associate some [k-] initials with j- that happened in most Mandarin dialects and to a limited degree in all or most Wu dialects, even the most conservative varieties. Which is why Beijing used to be pronounced as Peking in the 19th century. But this is an areal feature that also is in many Chinese dialects other than Min.

What sets apart Min Nan from Min Dong is that Min Nan, to a degree, still retains all the final stops (-p, -t, -k and -h) and all the final nasals (-n, -m and -ng) of Middle Chinese. Why Middle? Because Min didn't retain the -b, -d and -g stops in Old Chinese, just like all modern variants of Chinese. Where as Min Dong collapses all final non-nasal stops into -h (glottal stop) or -k and all nasal finals in to -ng. (Something that is quite similar to Wu, as all final stops in Wu end in a glottal stop as -h and all nasal finals may act as if they are different, but are actually allophonic, based on the vowel preceding it, which is why you see -ong but not -ang and -ing, instead it's -ã and -in. It implies that a similar combining event existed in proto-Wu, but eventually the nasals split allophonically as time went on. And also, many former nasal finals in Wu lost their nasality. So there was something like a -oen or -aen, but later became -oe and -ae, though they usually have cognates with nasal finals in other Chinese dialects.)

There are also other aspects that are involved in this, but I'm no expert in Min linguistics.

Interesting ! 陳 is pronounced as Ding in MinDong ?

That proves that the ancient minnan group share a common pronounciation ie. 陳

Quanzhou - Tan
Zhangzhou - Tan
Amoy - Tan
Teociu - Tan
Puxian - Tan
Hainan - ?

I am not sure about Hainan, can somebody fill that up ...

Edited by xng, 06 July 2011 - 05:55 AM.

[qrasy]

Interesting ! 陳 is pronounced as Ding in MinDong ?

Fuzhou
Ding - literary
Deng - Colloquial.
(the "d" are voiceless like in Pinyin)

Minnan has 陳
Tin - literary (as used in 陳情; 陳述 should follow literary too)
Tan - colloquial

That proves that the ancient minnan group share a common pronounciation ie. 陳

I don't see how the Fuzhou pronunciations would "prove" anything about Minnan.

[xng]

I don't see how the Fuzhou pronunciations would "prove" anything about Minnan.

When all the other Minnan dialects has the same or similar pronounciation for 陳, it proves that MinDong is quite different from Minnan. I am sure there are other similar examples.

How does MinDong pronounce 黃 and 王 as surname ?

Quanzhou - Ng
Teociu - ?
Puxian - Ng
Zhangzhou - Ooi(n)
Amoy - Ng
Hainan - Ooi(n)

王

Quanzhou - Ong
Teociu - Ong
Puxian - Ong
Zhangzhou - Ong
Amoy - Ong
Hainan - ?

It is just like 陳 is pronounced as Chan in cantonese which is very different from Min languages.

Edited by xng, 08 July 2011 - 01:29 AM.