长臂猿
changbiyuan
November 26, 2008, 03:26 PM posted in General DiscussionOkay, so to go along with my gradual emergence from lurkerdome I figured I should have a somewhat cleverer screen name than my own name minus the spacing and capitalization.
So I'm going with the name that was given to me by an (American) friend I had in China. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could change my username here without any hassle. So 长臂猿 (cháng bèi yuán) it is.
However when looking up that pinyin above on my much-loved Chinese annotation tool, I saw that 臂 came up as bèi rather than its usual
Incidentally, the name translates to "gibbon" which is close to my English surname.
RJ
November 26, 2008, 10:51 PMPerhaps Changye can shed more light on this long armed ape.
changye
November 27, 2008, 12:07 AMHi rjberki,
No further information, haha. All I can say is that "bei" is probably more conversational (or dialectal) than "bi", as is often the case with this type of multi-reading characters, like 色 (se4/shai3) and 得 (dei3/de2). For the record, 康熙字典 only shows 臂 (bi4), but not (bei).
johnb
November 27, 2008, 12:47 AMIn my experience, 臂 is pronounced bei4 in 胳臂 but bi4 everywhere else. I suspect that it's a dialect version of 胳膊 that, at some point, swapped 膊 for 臂 but kept the dialect pronunciation, and then reentered 普通话 with the new pronunciation.
changye
November 27, 2008, 02:20 AMHi johnb,
You are sharp. I think your swap-theory is very plausible. Actually, the pair of sounds “bei”/“bo” is more likely than that of “bei”/“bi”. In the case of the character “膊” (bo), it had an entering tone “- k” in the past, and its ancient sound was something like “pak”.
As you know, there is no entering tone in modern Mandarin, and the entering tone “k” often changed into “i” in modern pronunciations, just like 北 (bei) and 得 (dei), both of which were pronounced “puok” and “tok” respectively in ancient times.
I guess that the sound of “膊” changed from “pak” into “bo” in Beijing area, but it changed into “bai”/”bei” or something like that in some dialects, and then reentered 普通话 as you explained cleverly, which is the reason 康熙字典 doesn’t list the sound “bei”.
Just a wild guess.
johnb
November 27, 2008, 05:39 AMchangye,
Ah, yes, that provides a very plausible path to 多音字-hood! I'm pretty unfamiliar with the reconstructed pronunciations, so mine was more of a shot in the dark, but knowing the pronunciation changes adds a lot more substance.
changbiyuan
November 27, 2008, 07:04 AMGlad I could spark such a conversation! Thanks for the clarifications and I'm glad I don't have to modify my name again to be correct.
RJ
November 26, 2008, 10:31 PMActually Owen both bi4 and bei represent the same character 臂 and mean "arm" when used alone but in the word Gibbon （长臂猿） it should be bi4.