I am proud to finally have taken the time to explore the sound changes that exist between Japanese and their Chinese borrowings. Since the beginning of my studies, I have noticed a number of similarities between certain Chinese words and the corresponding Japanese pronunciations. Therefore, I will be working on a series of posts related to what I have discovered in relation to sound changes that have occured in the history of Sino-Japanese language contact.
Before we begin please take note: I am only referring to borrowings. The Japanese had their own language before contact with the Chinese and Korean cultures. You might be able to find evidence that goes against mine--please share what you know or find, so I can better hypothesize my theories. Moreover, as many kanji have more than one pronunciation--the "Japanese" and the "Chinese"--I am simply looking at those words and pronunciations which might show evidence of borrowing. I hope this does not skew or bias my discoveries, but, again, please share your comments with me.
The first thing I wish to look at was an oddity that I had noticed in the number system. Previous learning of (very, very) basic Korean had introduced me to the idea that these languages share numbers, much like the Romance languages have similar numbers. Considering China's historical economic dominance in the region, it makes sense that these numbers would share a common origin. This is similar to the Germanic languages maintaining some of the numbers of the Romance languages. The economic relations set certain languages in a prestigious position, and the other cultures adopted the numbering systems for trade. Evidence? Unfortunately, at this point, I am merely speculated based on the evidence before me.
No matter the similarities, one number in particular drove me crazy--I could not figure out where the number came from. Let's look at the series 1-5.
- 一 yi ichi
- 二 er ni
- 三 san san
- 四 si shi (yo/yon)
- 五 wu go
Now, if you look closely, 1, 3, and 4 seem to be clearly related. We'll talk about 5 on another day because, surprisingly enough, there is something going on there. The number that bothered me the most has always been 2. What is the relationship between er and ni? Well, let's look at some other words from the textbook that I am learning from:
- 二 er ni
- 人 ren nin
- 日 ri ni
- 入 ru nyuu
What do we have here? A pattern. A very specific pattern. It seems in each case, the Chinese /r/ sound was transformed into a に /ni/. Notice also that /ru/ combines the に /ni/ and the う /uu/ to create にゅう /nyuu/. This is only a small sample, but I feel that if we looked, we could find more. How about the Chinese work 肉 /rou/? What is the Japanese word?
- 肉 （にく）niku
And again, we see the /r/ at the beginning of /rou/ become the /ni/ as before. Can you find more evidence? Can you provide evidence against this hypothesis? I look forward to hearing from you.
さよなら！
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