Re: Blue grass and skies

From: "H. S. Teoh"

> This is interesting... "noksaek" sounds like a derivation from the
> Cantonese "lok" or perhaps from "lek" in my mothertongue, Hokkien (I'm not
> sure that's the right transliteration... AFAIK there isn't a consistent
> orthographic system for my mothertongue yet).
I think you've made the right connection (see previous post). As for
Hokkien's orthographic system, they're working on it.

> I've been noticing a strangely close correlation between certain Hokkien
> and Korean words, esp. in the pronunciation. Often, it's even closer than
> Mandarin to Korean. I suspect there is a deep connection here, but can't
> make much sense of it, since Korea is in the north and Fukien is in the
> south: I don't see why two peoples so far apart would have such similar
> words and pronunciations whereas the languages in between (eg. Mandarin)
> sounds less alike. I'd like to believe it's just coincidence, but I've
> just come across way too many Korean words that are pronounced in almost
> exactly the same way as in Hokkien.
Keep in mind that historically, Mandarin is the new kid on the block. Again,
I can only speak for my own experience with Japanese, but Japanese
distinguishes the way they read characters by the indigenous, Japanese way
(kunyomi) and the Sino-Japanese loan way (onyomi). And onyomi itslef breaks
down into "go" (based on the Wu dialects) and "kan" (based on the Northern
Han dialects). Now here, I'm historically fuzzy, but I would guess that the
first wave of Chinese to hit Japan was "go", followed later by "kan".
Perhaps we can guess that during the first period of Chinese colonial
expansion, the Wu and Min dialects were not so dissimilar as now? At any
rate, when I was in Japan, I found it better to rely on Cantonese readings
of the Chinese characters to help me guess at "onyomi" ('cause the modern Wu
dialects reduce all the old final consonants to a glottal stop, while Yue
and Min retain them)(I didn't have Fujian dialect at my disposal at the
time, but Yue and Min were close enough for government work). And it's not
just coincidence, though I don't have all the historical data. And for the
twenty minutes I studied Korean, it was really easy to make the
Yue/Min-Korean connection while learning new vocab.

> > namsaek: exclusively blue (something-colored, but I don't recognize
"nam"
> >   because I *thought* nam by itself meant "south," maybe got
contracted?)
>
> Seems to me that "nam" comes from the Hokkien "lam" (blue), which derives
> from the Mandarin "lan". Maybe I'm just deluding myself, but in Hokkien,
> blue is "lamsek" (pronounced almost exactly the same as the Korean except
> for the initial consonant). In fact, "lamsek" literally means "blue
> color". The "sek" seems to be the same as the Korean "saek" (pronounced
> the same way, too).
Yup.

> > hwaesaek: grey
>
> Hmm. "Grey" in Hokkien is "huaysek" (probably pronounced the same way as
> in Korean, but I never heard "hwaesaek" in Korean before so I'm not sure).
Yup.

> > keum: gold (colored)
> Hmm. "Gold" in Hokkien is "Kim", derived from the Mandarin "qing" (ching
> or tsing, in the older romanizations).
No, Mandarin is "jin1" (chin, tsin). Hokkien is "gim1" (I'll buy "kim",
depending on the orthographic system).

> > I learned silver and copper at some point, but don't remember them.
>
> Hey, this could be a way of checking my hypothesis (or conspiracy theory,
> if you will). "Silver" in Hokkien is "gim". If you find out, I'd like to
> know if my theory holds up :-)
>
> (But I forgot what "copper" in Hokkien is, so we can't check that one for
> now.)
Mandarin "silver" is "yin2", "copper", "tong2"; Cantonese: "silver",
"ngan4", "copper", "tong4"; Hokkien: "silver", "ggin5" or "ggun5 (Hokkien
breaks into distinctions, too), "copper", "dang5" or "dong5"; Japanese
onyomi: "silver", "gin" (kunyomi: "shirogane"); "copper", "doo" (kunyomi:
"okagane").

Kou