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Fun with Chinese dialects
My latest toy: An Etymological Dictionary of Common Chinese Characters. I haven't really examined it in detail yet, so I'm not sure how his reconstruction differs from Pulleyblank's (or how he justifies it), but it seems sound enough--at least for my online purposes, which don't require a great level of detail. I'm just glad he doesn't use some crazy ugly transcription system like Karlgren's.
I was doing some comparisons of various Chinese dialects the other night (kids, don't try this at home!) and it got me thinking about the interchanges between /hw/ and /f/. For instances, Mandarin /f/ generally corresponds to Minnan (including Taiwanese) /hw/, e.g. 發 SC fā, TW hoat. Since /f/ isn't found in reconstructed Middle Chinese (Baxter has *pjot), I'm not certain of the exact development, but *pj > *f > hw looks more likely to me than *pj > hw with no intermediate stage.
In Cantonese and Hakka, however, you see precisely the converse. That is, earlier /hw/ becomes /f/. For instance, 花 *xwæ > SC huā, CT/HK fā. Actually, this overstates the case for Cantonese. As you can see from the Middle Chinese form, the initial consonant was /x/. This is important because, although both Mandarin and Hakka treat *x and *h the same (which in the case of the latter means changing /hw/ to /f/, e.g. 華 *hwæH > SC huà, HK fàh[*]), Cantonese doesn't (華 *hwæH > CT wàh).
Another wrinkle is that Cantonese has merged earlier *kh with *x, which then follows the same development before /w/. So, for instance, 快 *khwæjH > faai (cf. SC kuài, HK k(w)ài). What I find especially interesting about this is that the first part of the change--*kh > *x--is shared by Vietnamese, i.e. 快 khoái [xwɑ́j]. Coincidental convergence or something else? Ah, always so much more research to be done!
Edit: Aha, the difference between *x and *h is voicing: Karlgren and Pulleyblank reconstruct *x and *ɣ for the pre-MC values.
[*] Final <h> here is a diacritic indicating low tone and is not to be pronounced as a consonant.
I was doing some comparisons of various Chinese dialects the other night (kids, don't try this at home!) and it got me thinking about the interchanges between /hw/ and /f/. For instances, Mandarin /f/ generally corresponds to Minnan (including Taiwanese) /hw/, e.g. 發 SC fā, TW hoat. Since /f/ isn't found in reconstructed Middle Chinese (Baxter has *pjot), I'm not certain of the exact development, but *pj > *f > hw looks more likely to me than *pj > hw with no intermediate stage.
In Cantonese and Hakka, however, you see precisely the converse. That is, earlier /hw/ becomes /f/. For instance, 花 *xwæ > SC huā, CT/HK fā. Actually, this overstates the case for Cantonese. As you can see from the Middle Chinese form, the initial consonant was /x/. This is important because, although both Mandarin and Hakka treat *x and *h the same (which in the case of the latter means changing /hw/ to /f/, e.g. 華 *hwæH > SC huà, HK fàh[*]), Cantonese doesn't (華 *hwæH > CT wàh).
Another wrinkle is that Cantonese has merged earlier *kh with *x, which then follows the same development before /w/. So, for instance, 快 *khwæjH > faai (cf. SC kuài, HK k(w)ài). What I find especially interesting about this is that the first part of the change--*kh > *x--is shared by Vietnamese, i.e. 快 khoái [xwɑ́j]. Coincidental convergence or something else? Ah, always so much more research to be done!
Edit: Aha, the difference between *x and *h is voicing: Karlgren and Pulleyblank reconstruct *x and *ɣ for the pre-MC values.
[*] Final <h> here is a diacritic indicating low tone and is not to be pronounced as a consonant.