User Comments - changye

Posted on: 《易经》的本意

《十三辙》, which has thirteen rhyme groups, might be originated in 《中原音韵》 (1324), a well known rhyme book that was made for 元曲(Qu songs) and has nineteen rhyme groups, without considering tone differences. Using the same tone was not necessary for rhyming in Qu songs. Just a thought.

Posted on: 不一样的《阿凡达》

有些中国人批评《阿凡达》说，这部美国科幻片讽刺中国暴利拆迁，或者讽刺中国争取海外自然资源，哎呀，谁说中国人缺乏想象力？看电影不必过于考虑，你最好单纯一点。更有意思的是，最近有些美国人也开始批评《阿凡达》。他们说是《阿凡达》暗暗讽刺美海兵队，也会惹起强烈的反美情绪。看到观众的这种反应就让我想起一句中国俗话，“没做亏心事，不怕鬼敲门”。人有亏心事，就连电影都怕！

Posted on: 《易经》的本意

Hi zhou_rui

Let me tell you an interesting episode about 《韵镜/or 韵鉴》. The Rhyme table, which is thought to have been originally made in the 10th century, was lost in China sometime after the new edition by 张麟之 was released in 1161. Fortunately, some copies of 《韵镜》 were imported to Japan before the rhyme table was completely lost in China, and it came back to China in the latter half of the 19th century. The study of 《韵镜》 has traditionally been flourish in Japan. As you might know, Japanese people cherish books very much, hehe.

Posted on: 《易经》的本意

Hi davidxuzhou

Thanks for the story about 十三辙, which was completely new to me. I found a table of modern vowels classified based on 十三辙. For the record, the 206 vowel groups shown in 广韵 can be divided into sixteen groups (十六摄), without considering tones, based on similarity in vowels.

http://tupian.hudong.com/a0_50_02_01000000000000119080223365850_jpg.html

Posted on: Designing the New Apartment

违法砸墙这个行为在中国很常见，已经成为一个深刻的社会问题。有的人甚至随便砸外墙开个商店，导致楼体开裂，居民因此担心他们的“小天地”会坍塌。世上很少有人愿意成为“堕天使”，对不对？

Posted on: Pay Verbs

Hi zhou_rui

Many thanks! That's very helpful. I'll try to read them later,although I don't know how long it will take to finish reading, hehe. Gee, 李方桂 is the only name I know among the four scholars.......

Posted on: Pay Verbs

Hi zhou_rui

Thanks a lot for the links! Ummm, I'm afraid I can't find the summary you mentioned. Would you please tell me where it is? Anyway, looks like reading these theses is just beyond my competence, hehe.

> thesis that summarizes everything up until the 1990s very well (the summaries are worth a read).

Posted on: Pay Verbs

Hi zhou_rui

> Old Chinese had no tones.

I hear there is still no accepted theory on the tone system in old Chinese (上古汉语). There're several different theories, and they generally have one thing in common, that is to say, the tone system in old Chinese is not the same as that in middle Chinese (中古汉语). The tone system in proto/primitive Chinese language is another story, of course.

> The four tones of Middle Chinese are thought to originate in ending consonants which later disappeared.

I think this theory is just interesting. Would you please elaborate this a little further? Does this mean that "all the Hanzi readings/sounds had an ending consonant in old Chinese"? Honestly, I'm not so familiar with tones/tone systems in old Chinese, although I'm interested in them.

I couldn't find the book 声韻学 (by 笠家寧, Taiwan) at online bookstores in the PRC, but finally found it at an online second-hand bookstore. I'm afraid it's rather expensive, about 200RMB, but I'm considering getting a copy of the book. Many thanks for letting me know that!!

Posted on: Pay Verbs

Hi bababardwan

You need to take into account ancient sounds when studying etymologies.

罚 and 法 happen to have the same sound in modern Mandarin, but they didn't in ancient times. Their ancient readings, old Chinese (上古音), are reconstructed as "biat" and "piap" respectively, which are not the same, but somewhat similar to each other. The reconstructed sounds slightly vary from scholar to scholar.

On the other hand, 罚 and 法 happen to have different tones in modern Mandarin, but interestingly, they had the same tone in ancient times, that is to say, "entering tone" (入声), although they had different stop/final consonants, "t" and "p", as you can see below.

罚.... biat (entering tone) > fa (second tone)

法.... piap (entering tone) > fa (third tone)

Having said that, in fact, nobody knows how these characters were actually pronounced/read when they were created more than two thousand and several hundred years ago. Reconstructed sounds don't necessarily represent the sounds of characters when they were created/used for the first time.

As far as I know, the original meanings of 罚 and 法 were similar to each other, which indicated something related to "punishment". And they had similar sounds (or possibly the same sound??) in ancient times. So, I'm also tempted to say "it's not a coincidence", hehe, but all I can say is "God knows".

Sorry, no conclusion.

Posted on: Pay Verbs

Hi bababardwan

> 文 refers to formal and 白 to colloquial,对不对？

You are right. 文 indicates "formal/written", and 白 "colloquial". Colloquial sounds are often longer than those used in 文言 (classical written Chinese). For example, 得 (dei/de), 色 (shai/se), 伯 (bai/bo), 薄 (bai/bo), and 剥 (bao/bo), and perhaps this is because the longer sounds are easier both to utter and to hear.