etymologically correct pronunciation

[Michael Thigpen]

Rathpy,

I personally find changes in sound and tone very interesting. Hopefully I'm not going to far with the information, but I thought I'd share a little background on some of the more common sound changes in Cantonese.

A note on the different examples you gave--

Many of the changes you are looking at are very similar to tone change rules, except these are sound change rules that are applied over a long period of time. Look at your first example:

參 cam1 / caam1 / sam1 / saam1:
-- 參加 caam1 gaa1 - to participate in
-- 入參 jap6 sam1 - ginseng

The initial "c" in jyutping corresponds to the symbol I have circled in both red and blue. It corresponds to the sound "ch" in English. Note that it is in the "palatal" column on the chart. A powerful force in sound change is called "palatalization" where sounds in nearby columns change into sounds in that column. The initial "s" in jyutping is also "s" in the IPA symbols (circled in red). You would expect it to become an "sh" sound, since that is the palatal closest to it, but because both sounds nearest on the chart do not exist in Cantonese (they're in yellow), so instead it moves to the "ch".



In cases like this, you could reconstruct the original sound through a number of different processes. But while there may be an original sound back in an older version of Cantonese, it no longer is the "default". In many cases the older version is preserved in a minority of sayings as the change sometimes leaves a sort of "fossil".

If you look at the other example of the "z/c" (I prefer j/ch) change, you'll see that these sounds are also very similar.

Hope that wasn't too boring.

[%sig%]

[rathpy]

Michael,

No way!, not too much information.

From the chart, I see 't' and 'd' are close ('t' is the aspirated version, right?), as in:

調 diu6 / tiu4
-- 音調 jam1 dui6 - tone
-- 調和 tui4 wo6 - suit well; mediate; compromise


Regards,
rathpy

[rathpy]

Kobo-Daishi wrote:

>> I think you mean 人參 [Mand: ren2 shen1, Cant: yan4 chaam1] is ginseng and not 入參. In Jyutping it’s “jan4 caam1”... <<

Thanks for picking up that boo-boo in my notes. Yes, it's 人 in 人參 ginseng. (And now I'll remember it because of your story).

But for the Jyutping pronunciation of the compound, my Cantonese dictionary gives 'jan4 sam1' instead of 'jan4 caam1'. (???)

Regards,
rathpy

[Kobo-Daishi]

Dear Rathpy,

You’re right. The Cantonese pronunciation for 人參 should be “yan4 sam1” in Yale romanisation and “jan4 sam1” in Jyutping romanisation.

I used a computer program, that takes its data from the Unicode site’s Unihan database, to look up the Cantonese pronunciation and unfortunately the data is not all inclusive.

I should have checked with a secondary source to make sure.

Here is the link for information on the 參 character at Unicode’s site

http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUniha ... utf8=false

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

[Terence]

ＣＯＲＲＥＣＴ。

[Michael Thigpen]

Rathpy,

Right. 't/d" is another one of the close sounds. You'll also see from the chart where the n/l confusion comes in.

[%sig%]

[pattu]

As far recording/ knowing the “etymologically correct” pronunciation is concerned, I still would like to do that if possible. I appreciate that language just evolves, differently in different places, and that it’s all valid. But in some cases, aren’t some pronunciations more “original (or whatever)”