On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 10:06:48 +0100, Philip Newton
<philip.newton@...> wrote:
>> The '-gu' element and 'Gu-' are probably the same, from Mandarin
>> 'guo' "nation".
>
>Kind of, but the bits that are the same are "guk" of "Hanguk" and
>"Gug" of "(Han)gugeo".
Aha. So I guess the words were borrowed from Old or Middle Chinese.
>Both readings are cognate with Chinese: Ri4ben3, as was previously
>mentioned in another thread. The first is usually "nichi" or "jitsu",
>though, when not in the word "Nihon" (and indeed, "Nippon" may be from
>"nichi" + "hon", since -chi endings can cause following stops to be
>doubled, and *hh -> pp). Incidentally, there's a difference in
>meaning: "nichi" usually means "Japan" while "jitsu" usually means
>"sun" or "day".
What about 'kon nichi wa'?
Where did the -chi and -tsu endings come from?
>No. The Chinese cognate is yu3 "language" ("eo" in Sino-Korean). The
>cognate of Mandarin guó in Japanese in "koku" (also showing the final
>-k that the word must have had in earlier Chinese.)
Aha. So where does Japanese 'go' come from?
>It certainly does in "Hanguk" (well, to Korea or to the Han
>tribe/people). I've heard from a Korean that the "han" in "Hangeul"
>does not mean "Korean" but something like "great", and was originally
>written with "arae-a", a vowel which dropped out of use in most
>dialects of Korean. But he's a native speaker, so he could be wrong.
Okay.
>"eo", actually, TTBOMK. This is the Sino-Korean word, cognate with
>Chinese yu3.
TTBOMK?
>gug + mal or gug + eo, not gu + anything.
Right. 'Guk' plus weakening (voicing) of the /-k/?
- Rob