POJ translation of 蔢?

[elmer]

Hello,

Does anybody know how 蔢 was pronounced in Hokkien (Amoy / Zhangzhou dialect)? I can not find it in the dictionaries I know on the internet.

thanks and regards,
Elmer

[Mark Yong]

If we go by the 反切 fanqie pronunciation as provided in the Kangxi Dictionary:
http://www.zdic.net/z/23/kx/8522.htm
it should come out as pō.

What I normally do as a quick first step if I want to find the pronunciation of a character is to perform the following Google search:
<character> site:twblg.dict.edu.tw

[elmer]

Thanks, but does Kangxi dictionary give pronunciation in Hokkien?

regards,
Elmer

[amhoanna]

This kind of thing takes a little detective work.

Step 1 is to go to the Hokkien-specific 韻書, such as the 當代泉州音字彙. Being a practical guy, I like to start with Step 0: how is the character pronounced in real life?

The answer in this case, is "not at all". The character is not used in "real life", AFAIK.

Next, we go to the 韻書. I believe traditionally in Hokkien-land there were three go-to 韻書, one for Coanciu, one for Ciangciu, and one for Amoy. I think they're all available online, and I have the Ciangciu on my hard drive ... but the Coanciu-based 當代泉州音字彙 is easiest to access, since it's online, and searchable, at
http://alt.reasoning.cs.ucla.edu/jinbo/dzl/lookup.php

From all that I know of Hokkien, this character would have the same pronunciation across all Hokkien dialects -- so I'll be lazy and just use the 當代泉州音字彙. We get "pô", homophonic with 婆, which makes sense. (The online 當代泉州音字彙 uses a different romanization; got to convert it.)

Step 2: As a double-check, we can do what MARK YONG did. We get pô and pō.

Step 3: Put ourselves in the old-timers' shoes. "What were they thinking?" Here's one guess. If the kanji was used in a name, most likely it was a girl's name, and they wanted to name her, basically, 〇婆, but they also wanted to spice up the second character and not use plain 婆 itself.


Based on all this, I would go with "pô".

[amhoanna]

And to answer Elmer's question, no, the Kangxi does not do Hokkien. The three Hokkien 韻書 do. The Ciangciu one is called 彙音寶鑑, I think.

Using the Kangxi, the Chiat'ūn（《切韻》）, etc. is nevertheless a valid technique; it's deduction by analogy (or induction, I forget the difference).

[Abun]

It may be not make much of a difference to elmer if he merely wants to transcribe the name for a register and cares about phonological differences secondarily, but my 康熙字典 gives the second pronounciation as 步臥切, and I believe 臥 is ngō͘ (with a dot of course, or did I just miss the dot in your transcription, amhoanna?). I'm not quite sure what to make of that though... technically speaking it should be 步臥切 should then render pōⁿ, shouldn't it, seeing as the vowel in ngōo is nasal. But it wouldn't make any sense for 蔢 to be nasal so I guess it's pō͘ (not nazalized) after all. Does anybody know a rule to determine when the nasalization is to be taken into consideration in 反切 and in what cases it doesn't? I would guess it has something to do with different stratae of Hokkien vocab?

[elmer]

Thanks a lot,

How does this site http://alt.reasoning.cs.ucla.edu/jinbo/dzl/lookup.php work? If I enter te character, I get bou2?

regards,
Elmer

[amhoanna]

Elmer:

bou2 on that site is "pô" in POJ. Pretty confusing!


Abun:

Good question. Elmer's kin would've had a specific pronunciation for each and every name; we are trying to figure out exactly what it would've been.

Keep in mind that the Kangxi -- or the 切韻 or 廣韻, one or both of which it's probably based on -- was not based on any form of Hokkien. Using the Kangxi for Hokkien is a little like using a Latin dictionary to figure out the proper form of a certain word or root in Portuguese. A good deal of historical linguistic maneuvering is implied.

臥 has a nasal vowel in Hokkien, yes -- but that's a Hokkien quirk. In the language of the 切韻, etc., there would've been no nasal. And the nasalization of the vowel lies w/i the sphere of Hokkien phonology, with no connection to the language of the 切韻, etc.

It also seems extremely unlikely to me that Elmer's kin would have used the * pō pronunciation. It's absence from the http://alt.reasoning.cs.ucla.edu/jinbo/dzl/lookup.php resource (Coanciu), and most likely from the other two rimebooks as well ... and with that, it's likely that Elmer's kin weren't even aware that this kanji had a Tone 7 reflex in any language. Keep in mind that, if the Tone 7 reflex is absent from the rimebooks, we could safely say that it does not even exist in Hokkien.

BTW a few of our other foristas are better versed in these things than I am.

[Abun]

Good question. Elmer's kin would've had a specific pronunciation for each and every name; we are trying to figure out exactly what it would've been. [...] It also seems extremely unlikely to me that Elmer's kin would have used the * pō pronunciation.

Agreed

Keep in mind that the Kangxi -- or the 切韻 or 廣韻, one or both of which it's probably based on -- was not based on any form of Hokkien. Using the Kangxi for Hokkien is a little like using a Latin dictionary to figure out the proper form of a certain word or root in Portuguese. A good deal of historical linguistic maneuvering is implied.

臥 has a nasal vowel in Hokkien, yes -- but that's a Hokkien quirk. In the language of the 切韻, etc., there would've been no nasal. And the nasalization of the vowel lies w/i the sphere of Hokkien phonology, with no connection to the language of the 切韻, etc.

Yes, of course the rhyme books are nothing more than a good indication as to what the pronounciation may be, I also have no doubt that there is no Hokkien pronounciation pōⁿ. But it is nonetheless interesting; mostly the Hokkien nasalizations correspond to nasal finals in both Hokkien literary readings as well as Mandarin, but there are a few words where this isn't true. Apart for 臥, the literary readings of 我, 五 and 馬 come to my mind. Considering literary readings are more recent Mandarin borrowings (Mandarin in this context meaning the 官話 of the era in question, not a precursor of modern day Mandarin), my working theory would be that during that time, Mandarin +nasal initial syllables sounded closer to Hokkien +nasal initial/nasalized syllables than -nasal initial/nasalized the ones; possibly Mandarin speakers tended to nasalize their syllables after nasal initial (but without the nasalization having phonemic character)? Or maybe native Hokkien Mandarin-speaking literati were not aware that voiced plosives and nasals are actually the same thing in Hokkien because of their education in Mandarin which differentiated them?

True, this question is probably hard (if not impossible) to solve and definitely rather something for a new thread^^' It just struck me

[amhoanna]

Abun, I think your hypothesis is basically right. This is an area that has already been adequately covered and "solved" by the Hoklologists, AFAIK; and all mapped out on a timeline. I'm not sure what the conclusion was.