Rahul Sharma (Editor)

Non Sinoxenic pronunciations

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Non-Sinoxenic pronunciations are vocabularies borrowed from Chinese, but differ from Sinoxenic pronunciations in that:

Contents

  • The corresponding Chinese writing system (hànzì) is not borrowed alongside the pronunciation
  • The pronunciation did not arise from the attempt at adopting Chinese as the literary language
  • The borrowed vocabulary is not limited to Classical Chinese, but often includes modern and colloquial forms of Chinese

    • As such, non-Sinoxenic pronunciations are therefore loanwords in which the corresponding Chinese character is not adopted. These non-Sinoxenic pronunciations are thus most prominent in Asian languages in which cultural exchanges with Chinese culture occurred (e.g. Mongolian, Central Asian or Turkic languages), but the adoption of the Chinese writing system did not occur. This also includes non-Sinitic languages within China (e.g. Tibetan, Uyghur, Hani, Zhuang, Hmong).

    While the Sinoxenic model has traditionally held the limelight as the most distinctive and influential model for the borrowing of Chinese vocabulary, it is not the only model. For Sinoxenic languages, pronunciations are regarded as non-Sinoxenic if there is a mismatch between the vocabulary and the codified Sinoxenic pronunciation.

    Timespan

    Chronologically, Mongolian borrowing of Chinese vocabulary took place later than that of the Sinoxenic languages.

    In contrast to Sinoxenic vocabulary, Sino-Mongolian vocabulary is not the result of an attempt to adopt Chinese as the literary language, nor the adoption of the Chinese writing system as a whole. The majority of Mongolian words borrowed from China occurred in the last 800 years, sourced from Early, Middle, and Modern Mandarin as spoken in northern China, rather than Classical Chinese, as in the case of Sinospheric cultures.

    Indirect and direct borrowing

    Modes of borrowing are not uniform. Some vocabulary was borrowed indirectly, such as the term for writing, bichig (Mongolian script: ᠪᠢᠴᠢᠭ᠌; Mongolian Cyrillic: бичиг) which appears to have entered from Turkic in ancient times. Bichig derives from biir (ᠪᠢᠷ; Mongolian Cyrillic: бийр), which was adopted from Tibetan for writing instrument, pir (Tibetan: པིར), which itself is derived from the Chinese word for pen or writing brush (Chinese: 笔; pinyin: bǐ).

    In more recent times, by far the greater proportion of words have been borrowed directly. Some are starkly different from the Chinese pronunciation, due to a large timespan with pronunciations changing overtime, or of impressionistic auditory borrowing. One example is the word for window, tsonkh (Mongolian script: ᠴᠣᠩᠬᠣ; Mongolian Cyrillic: цонх), from Chinese chuānghu (Chinese: 窗戶). Similarly, the word for peace, taivang (Mongolian script: ᠲᠠᠢᠢᠪᠣᠩ; Mongolian Cyrillic: тайван) is supposedly from Chinese tàipíng (Chinese: 太平), which also means peace. Note that the traditional spelling (which equates to 'taibung') makes no attempt to reproduce the original vowel in 平 píng.

    While the traditional Mongolian script often tends to highlight the original Chinese pronunciation, the Cyrillic orthography, which spells words as they are pronounced, obscures the connection with Chinese. For instance, the syllable-final н in the Cyrillic script is pronounced /ŋ/ in Mongolia, thus neutralising the earlier distinction between /ŋ/ and /n/ in this position and further obscuring the regularity of relationships with Chinese. This distinction between /ŋ/ and /n/ is retained in Inner Mongolian dialects.

    Examples

    Note that the following examples are in the context of non-Sinoxenic vocabulary that exist in the Mongolian language.

    The Sinoxenic languages of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese are included for comparative purposes. Words that do not actually occur in the Sinoxenic languages are given in their Sinoxenic reading, but greyed out. The absence of these terms in Sinoxenic languages suggests that the borrowing of Chinese in Mongolian is attributed to a more recent form of a Sino-Tibetan language (such as Early Mandarin and Middle Mandarin), rather than Classical Chinese.

    Sinoxenic vs non-Sinoxenic

    Although Sino-Korean vocabulary dominates the spectrum of borrowed Chinese words, there are words in Korean which are derived from Chinese, but are not Sinoxenic. In these cases, the corresponding pronunciation for the Chinese character (Hanja) does not match the borrowed vocabulary. Such loanwords most likely preserve a slightly different form of a Sinitic language than were codified in Sino-Korean, thus making them Chinese borrowings, but not Sinoxenic in their pronunciations.

    Brush

  • The Korean term for brush, bus (붓) is derived from Middle Korean but (붇), which in turn is most likely derived from Middle Chinese. However, the Sino-Korean pronunciation for brush 筆 was codified (and is pronounced) as pil (필).
  • Interestingly, other modern Chinese languages, namely Cantonese, pronounce 筆 as bat, which is closer to the Middle Korean pronunciation but (붇), indicating a preservation of another chronological form of Chinese in both languages.

    • Horse

  • The Korean term for horse, mal (말) is thought to derive from Classical Chinese term for horse (馬), but in fact the Sino-Korean reading for 馬 was codified (and is pronounced) as ma (마).

    • Ink

  • The Korean term for ink, meok (먹), is thought to derive from Classical Chinese term for ink (墨), but in fact the Sino-Korean reading for 墨 was codified (and is pronounced) as muk (묵).

    • Comb

  • The Korean term for comb, bit (빗) is thought to derive from Classical Chinese term for comb (篦) but in fact the Sino-Korean reading for 篦 was codified (and is pronounced) as bi (비).

    • Radish

    The word radish in Chinese, (simplified Chinese: 萝卜; traditional Chinese: 蘿蔔; pinyin: luóbo) was attested in various forms since early Old Chinese. Not only is this the source of the terms for "radish" and "turnip" in Sinoxenic languages like Korean (나복, nabok; or 라복, rabok) and Vietnamese (la bặc), but it has also been adopted in a non-Sinoxenic way by many other languages in China and around Asia.

    References

    Non-Sinoxenic pronunciations Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA