Depth of Historical Change

こんにちは！

Just to close off my discussion of phonological change, I would like to provide you with what I have learned thanks to Sojeong Min and Joseph Maza--Omniglot fan Club members who both really knew their stuff! 

Maza provided one truly insightful comment: "The modern Mandarin pronunciation may not be a good gauge since Mandarin has made many innovations that more conservative languages such and Cantonese do not have."

He also informed me that: "the 'ha' series was the 'ɸa' series: [h] -> [ɸ]."

Min brought up the influence of tone, saying: "Generally speaking, letters whose Mandarin reading start with b or f and have the first (high level 55) or the third tone (dipping 214) correspond to Japanese h, while those with the second (mid-rising 35) or the fourth tone (high-falling 51) correspond to both Japanese h and b."

Min provided examples to help clarify: 

           般 Mandarin ban1 /p-/ :: Japanese han (< fan)

          兵 Mandarin bing1 /p-/ :: Japanese hyou~hei (< fyau~fei)

Further, Min provided an explanation behind these processes.

"There were Middle Chinese phonemes /p/, /b/, and /ph/. Japanese borrowed each as /f/, /b/, and /f/ respectively.
 In Middle Chinese, there were three tones called level (平), rising (上), and departing (去). Level tone starting with /p/ or /ph/ became the Mandarin first tone (55), while level tone starting with /b/ became the second tone (35). Rising tone starting with /p/ or /ph/ became the third tone (214), and rising tone starting with /b/ and departing tone starting with any of the three consonants became the fourth tone (51).
/p/ and /b/ followed by /j/ became /f/ and /v/ respectively. Both of them are reflected in Mandarin as Pinyin f. Later, /p/ and /b/ merged to become a single phoneme that is represented as Pinyin b. However, the former distinction of /p/ and /b/ is left in the tones. This is an example of what is sometimes called 'cheshirization'.
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I want to give Maza and Min a big ありがとうございます！for participating in the discussion. I would love to hear from more of my readers. Practice, discussion, hypotheosizing, and sharing knowledge are all keys to learning! And I hope we are all learning something new.

I'll be back for more practice in the near future.

さよなら！