User Comments - changye

Posted on: 妈妈在哪里？

Hi lujiaojie,

我认为对这件事情抱有怀疑的邻居报案后，警察发现了妈妈的尸体，我对吗？

Posted on: 日本人的起源

Hi ysjt 同学，

Transliteration rules in Chinese are a little tricky. It seems there are some basic principles, but at the same time, you can easily find exceptions. I agree with you on the point that people tend to use “b, g” to transcribe “p, k”. For instance, the name of my chubby dog, Patty, is “芭迪 (ba1 di2)” in Chinese. It might be because the utterance of “b” is more energy saving than that of “p”. 

Having said that, things seem to be more complicated than I thought. The problem is that foreign words have been transliterated depending not only on Mandarin sounds but also on dialect sounds such as Cantonese. Canada/California are 加拿大/加利福尼亚 in Chinese, but Carolina/Canaveral/Cameron are transliterated as 卡罗来纳/卡纳维拉尔/卡梅伦 respectively.

Colombia is 哥伦比亚, but Colorado is 科罗拉多. My hunch “groundlessly” tells me that foreign words imported to China in early times were often transliterated with 加 or 哥 (based on Cantonese sounds?), and later people gradually began to use 卡/科 for Ca/Co. Hehe, I know this is not so persuasive. Anyway, it seems to me that sounds are heard differently by different ears! Thanks for your intriguing comments!

Posted on: 日本人的起源

Hi ysjt 同学，

It’s another fruitful day! After having read your comments, I hurriedly looked into a book titled “汉语方言概要” I bought last year and found that there is actually a double consonant “pf” in some northwest dialects (西安 and 兰州). The book says that “pf” is used instead of “zh / ch” before the vowel “u”. In some regions, “pf” is used instead of “p / b” before “u” or “o”.

Let me tell you why I was so excited. I know some linguists insist, Karlgren included, that there were double consonants (复辅音声母) in 上古音, ancient Chinese pronunciations before the 3rd ～ 4th century, but I didn’t know at all that a double consonant still exists in modern Chinese dialects. I ran through the book once before, but overlooked such an important point, hehe! 

I don’t know whether the “pf” actually originated in 上古音, or just appeared relatively recently, say several hundred years ago, but anyway, the existence of IT greatly interests me. I realized again that dialects are really precious linguistic “fossils”. Btw, it’s interesting to know that 西安人 use “嫽” in daily conversation. 现代汉语词典 defines it as 美好 [书, written language] !

Posted on: 日本人的起源

Hi ysjt 同学，

The two Cantonese websites are really good. I couldn’t find the character 架 in the lesson dialogues, but instead I found 家, a character that has the same pronunciation as that of 架, except for its tone. As far as I heard it, 家 doesn’t have any 韵尾 or 收尾, and I still think that there is a slight difference between sounds of Cantonese “架” and Japanese “か”.

As for the 反切 for “架”, let me tell you one of right answers, i.e. “架家讶切”, in which both 反切上字”家(jia1)” and 下字”讶(ya4)” exactly represent the consonant and vowel (+ tone) of 反切归字”架(jia4)” respectively. More importantly, ”讶” is also used as a 反切下字 of “架” in major ancient rhyme books, such as 唐韵 (8th century) and 广韵 (11th century).

In those rhyme books, the sound of “架” is described as “古讶切”, and you can reconstruct it based on 中古音 (mid Chinese sounds, 5th～10th century) as follows ; 架 (ga) = 古 + 讶 = gu + nga = ga , or in IPA symbols, 架 [ka] = 古 + 讶 = [ku] + [ŋ a] = [ka], where “g [k]” belongs to the consonant group “見 [k]”, and “a [a]” belongs to the vowel group “假摄 (二等, 开口)”.

As you can see from above, the sounds of 架，古，讶 in 中古音 are very similar to those in modern Cantonese, and it’s widely believed that the same can be said for many other Chinese characters, and that is the very reason why Cantonese is referred to as “a language fossil” in historical Chinese phonology. And there are other fossils in neighboring countries.

架，古，讶 are pronounced as [ka], [ko], [a] respectively in modern Korean, and [ka], [ko], [ga] in modern Japanese. Interestingly, they are also similar to their counterparts in middle Chinese and modern Cantonese. I suppose that the same goes for these characters in modern Vietnamese. In other words, Mandarin IS very different in pronunciations from others. Why?

………………….to be continued.

P/S. It is said that the sound of 架 (= 枷) had 韵尾 “i” in 上古音 (before the 4th century ?), and it was probably pronounced as “keai” or something like that. In general, reconstructed 中古音 are more reliable than 上古音. For instance, most of prominent linguists, such as Karlgren, 王力, 董同和, or 藤堂 (Japan), reconstructed the same 中古音 “[ka]” for “架”.

Posted on: Los Angeles

Hi xiaohu,

Thanks a lot for your explanation on Skinny ...... hehe, I can't memorize it anyway. It seems that to order a cup of coffee is not an easy job at Starbucks in the US.

Things were very simple when I was young. Just saying "Mocha blend, please" was OK at a coffee house. Things are even more simple now for me here in a small city in China. I only have one choice, "Nescafe (雀巢)". It's not so bad, though.

Posted on: Los Angeles

Hi mikeinewshot,

You are very right. Lesson intros are often more difficult for me than dialogues and lessons are. In particular, today's intro is very difficult in some ways, but at least it gives me an impression that L.A. is an attractive city! Btw, what is Skinny triple French Vanila Half Caf on Melrose? Is it an ice cream?

Posted on: 日本人的起源

Hi ysjt 同学，

I understand well why “evil” Japanese soldiers used the phrase “什么的干活”, since it’s perhaps only a straight translation of Japanese phrase “何の仕事 (what is your job)”. For Japanese who don’t know much about Mandarin, 什么 = 何 (what), 的 = の (of), and 干活 = 仕事 (job). It’s really “ALMOST”! What they wanted to say was, of course, “你是干什么的？” or “什么工作？”

As for Japanese grammar, to quickly explain it is just beyond my competence, so please refer to Wikipedia or 百度百科. What I can say is that Japanese grammar is more complicated than Chinese one, and Chinese is far more abundant in vocabulary than Japanese is. Chinese sentence is concise, but very profound. Japanese one is redundant, but emotionally expressive.

Posted on: 日本人的起源

Hi ysjt 同学！

I’m afraid that I rarely watch TV here in China, let alone anti-Japan movies, although I know watching TV programs is very beneficial for learning Chinese.

I got very interested in those Chinese transliterations you’ve shown in your comment, in particular, 八格牙路 (ba1 ge2 ya2 lu4 = ばかやろう, bakayaro) and 所旮 (suo3 ga1 = そうか, souka), because the Japanese sound “か” (ka, a little aspirated “k”) is being all transcribed with Chinese characters that have an unaspirated sound “g”, just like in Cantonese 架 (ga) is being employed to represent “か” (ka).

If I were Chinese, I would definitely chose 咖 (ka) or 卡 (ka) for “か”. I know both Japanese sound “か” (ka) and Chinese pinyin sound “ga” are often represented in the same IPA phonetic symbols, [ka], but I don’t think the two sounds are the same. By the way, owing to you, I’ve learned a word 旮旯儿 (ga1 lar2) today. My motto is “you can learn something even from propaganda movies!” …hehe, just joking.

P/S 对了，我看过国产动画片"铁道游击队"！

Posted on: 日本人的起源

Hi ysjt 同学！

Thank you very much for introducing such nice Cantonese websites. They are just great! In particular, the seconed one, a Cantonese learning site, is really good and helpful. They read out example sentences both in Cantonese and Mandarin line by line! Of course, I've already bookmarked them. I'll later listen carefully some of the lessons and post a feedback here, perhaps within today.

P/S Your tips about 小姐 and 姐姐 is just hilarious! Looks like there are tons of "姐姐" in 天津！ Wow!

Posted on: 日本人的起源

Hi ysjt,

There is something that has bothered me since I read one of your comments this morning. One thing is the 反切 “架家牙切” you showed in your posting. You said that “声调按照第二个字的声调来念”, i.e. “the second character (反切下字) has the same tone as that of the target character (反切归字) ”. In this case, the target character “架” (jia4) has the 4th tone, but strangely the second character (下字) “牙” (ya2 = ia2) has the 2nd tone in modern Mandarin.

FYI, 架 and 牙 have different tones even in Cantonese, the 3rd and the 4th tone respectively. Furthermore, out of curiosity, I looked into the ancient tones of the two characters, referring to 广韵 (a well-known ancient rhyme book for 中古音), and found that 架 belongs to the group of “去声”, but 牙 to “平声”. I occasionally come across such “imperfect 反切” when looking up in 广韵, but I must say “家牙切” is not appropriate as an example shown in your explanation.

The other thing is that I can’t readily agree with your argument about the phonetic values of 架 and 牙 in Cantonese. As far as I know, both characters don’t have 韵尾 such as “ng” and “p”, “t”, “k” (入声, entering tones), so I’m curious about where you got the idea of “牙的发音是 gnab” and “g 和 ab 拼起来就是”架”在粤语中的发音” from. According to a Cantonese dictionary, 架 and 牙 are pronounced as “ga3” and “nga4” respectively. Sorry, they are not IPA.

For the record, 架 is pronounced as “ka” both in Korean and Japanese, and 牙 is pronounced “a” and “ga” respectively. As you can see, the two characters don’t have 韵尾 even in Korean, where 韵尾 originated in ancient Chinese pronunciations are still well preserved. Having said that, I know almost nothing about “actual pronunciations” in Cantonese daily conversation, so if you have further information on this issue, please kindly let me know.