Re: Japanese from Tungus

I tried to send this yesterday, but it got rejected it apparently has a
'TEXT/ENRICHED' attechment. This was not intended, and I hope I have
successfully removed the offending attachment.

On Tuesday, January 25, 2005, at 01:20 , Matt Arriola wrote:
>
> I don't know what it is, but I'm sure there is one, considering "hon"
> is the on'yomi of
>
> 本
Yep - that is character for Mandarin _ben3_ in the Mandarin _Ri4ben3_
:)

> On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 20:09:26 -0500, Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:
>> That could very well be true.  Japanese has quite a few borrowed words
>> from
>> Chinese, and 'ni' may be one of them.  Is there a Mandarin cognate to
>> the -
>> hon/-pon element?
...and on Tuesday, January 25, 2005, at 02:30 , Matt Arriola wrote:
> I just found this by accident. I was reading an article on Wikipedia
> about Chinese borrowings in Japanese, and it said that Chinese r
> corresponds to Japanese n and ny-. Therefore, "Riben" in Chinese
> becomes "Nippon" in Japanese.
We only very recently had a thread on this very matter! On 18th of this
month (just a week ago), I wrote the following:
{quote}
It [Japan] is _Ri4ben3_ in "ASCII Pinyin" (or _Rìběn_ in real Pinyin),
from:
ri2 (rì) /z`i/ [z`M`]= sun
ben3 (běn) = source, origin
"(the land) where the sun rises"

The Japanese is _Nippon_ (also _Nihon_) and the Korean _Ilbon_.

Although I do not know the details, I have little doubt that the Japanese
& Korean names are derived from the Chinese. That /pon/ ~ /hon/ ~ /bon/
might be borrowings of the Chinese word which is now _ben3_ in Mandarin is
not difficult to believe. I agree the correspondence of /niti/ [nits\i] ~
il ~ ri4  is somewhat weird; at least with the Japanese & Mandarin forms
we presumably have the development of the syllabic onset and center:
/ni/ --> /nZ\i/ --> /Z\i/ --> /z`i/

I assume the original form was /nit/, as Isaac says, but when the final -t
fell silent in pre-Mandarin, I do not know - nor how this might or might
not have affected the tone. A somewhat unreliable book that I have gives
the Cantonese equivalent as _yet_. If this is approximately correct (I
expect no more from that source), then it suggests a development in the
Cantonese region of /Z\i/ --> /ji/ which is not at all extra-ordinary. I
would _guess_ that the Korean is derived from a form such as */jit/.
{/quote}

Now we have confirmation that _ben3_, _pon_ and _bon_ are all 'the same
word'.
==============================================================

On Tuesday, January 25, 2005, at 03:33 , Henrik Theiling wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Rob Haden <magwich78@...> writes:
>> ...
>> Are 'Hanguk' and 'Hangul' caseforms of some word 'Hangu'?
>
> No, -guk and -gul are totally different words.
Yep. I have seen the first Romanized as 'Hangwuk' and the second as
'Hangeul'


>> The '-gu' element and 'Gu-' are probably the same, from Mandarin
>> 'guo' "nation".
>
> No, 'guk' corresponds to Mandarin 'guo2' (probably at the time of
> borrowing, the Chinese words still had an ending -k).
Correct - it is _kwok_ in Cantonese and the Japanese borrowing from the
same Chinese root is _koku _.

>  For 'gul', someone else will have to help, I don't know.
Nor do I.

> Case endings are longer in Korean -- namely full syllables, at least
> no single consonants -- and actually are no cases but postpositions,
> IIRC.
Yep - they are postposited particles, much the same system as Japanese.
Indeed, it because Korean and Japanese are similar in structure that many
posit a relationship between Korean and Japanese. But one has to be
cautious. If one judges simply by similarities of structure, then a good
case can be made out for a relationship between the Celtic and semitic
languages; but few would take such a relationship seriously.

In the case of Korean & Japanese some apparent similarities may well be
the result of long cultural interaction. Both Japanese and Korean have
also borrowed heavily from Chinese. But the basic stock of non-Chinese
words in both languages AFAIK show no obvious relationship.

As far as I know, that Japanese and Korean are related is not proven.

>  I just recal '-neun' to be one of the nominative endings (I
> think there are two depending on stem).
My information is that -nun is a particle marking the topic and is the
same whether the noun ends in a vowel or consonant. But the specific
subject particle is:
-i after cconsonants;
-ga after vowels.

AFAIK the origin of both languages is very speculative.

Ray
=======================================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
=======================================================
"If /ni/ can change into /A/, then practically anything
can change into anything"
          Yuen Ren Chao, 'Language and Symbolic Systems"

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