Yin & Yang and The I Ching

10/10/2014 Yin & Yang and the I Ching
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Yin & Yng
and the I Ching
In India the theory of the three elements in the Chndogya Upanishad led to the theory of the three forces, the
gun.as, and to the later theory of five elements. In China, the theory of five elements coexisted early with the
theory of two forces: and . These can also simply be called the "two forces," (where ch'i,
, is the "breath" or vital energy of the body, but also simply air, steam, or weather). In the Spring and
Autumn Period there was actually a Yin and Yang School. Later its theories were accepted by nearly
everyone, but especially by Taoism. The implications of the theory are displayed in the great book of
divination, the I Ching, , the "Book of Changes."
Yin originally meant "shady, secret, dark, mysterious, cold." It thus could mean the shaded, north
side of a mountain or the shaded, south bank of a river. Yang in turn meant "clear, bright,
the sun, heat," the opposite of yin and so the lit, south side of a mountain or the lit, north
bank of a river. From these basic opposites, a complete system of opposites was
elaborated. Yin represents everything about the world that is dark, hidden, passive,
receptive, yielding, cool, soft, and feminine. Yang represents everything about the world that is
illuminated, evident, active, aggressive, controlling, hot, hard, and masculine. Everything in the world can be
identified with either yin or yang. Earth is the ultimate yin object. Heaven is the ultimate yang object. Of the
two basic Chinese "Ways," Confucianism is identified with the yang aspect, Taoism with the yin aspect.
Although it is correct to see yin as feminine and yang as masculine, everything in the world is really a
mixture of the two, which means that female beings may actually be mostly yang and male beings may
actually be mostly yin. Because of that, things that we might expect to be female or male because they clearly
represent yin or yang, may turn out to be the opposite instead.
Taoism takes the doctrine of yin and yang, and includes it in its own theory of change. Like Anaximander and
Heraclitus, Taoism sees all change as one opposite replacing the other. The familiar diagram of Yin and
Yang, the , the "Great Ultimate" [Wade-Giles T'ai-chi] diagram, shows the opposites flowing
into each other. The diagram also illustrates, with interior dots, the idea that each force contains the seed of
the other, so that they do not merely replace each other but actually become each other. (The earliest attested
example of the diagram, strangely enough, occurs on a Roman shield illustrated in the fifth century Notitia
Dignitatum.)
Unlike Heraclitus, Taoism sees change as violent only if the Tao [Do] is
opposed: If Not Doing, , and No Mind, , are practiced, then
the Tao guides change in a natural, easy way, making for beauty and life. Since
trying to be in control is a yang (or Confucian) attribute, Taoism sees Not
Doing (and Taoism itself) on the yin side of things; but since Not Doing does
not literally mean doing nothing, Taoism can use the language of passivity and
receptivity to mean something that is actually quite active.
That is especially obvious in the use of the term [Wade-Giles jou
2
], "soft,
pliant, yielding, gentle." Rudo, the "yielding way," is read in Japanese as jud and is the name of a popular
Martial Art. Judo doesn't look at all yielding or gentle, but it does employ Taoist doctrine in so far as it is not
supposed to originate force or an attack but takes the attack of an opponent and uses its own force against it.
Thus the great economist F.A. Hayek invoked Taoism in the defense of capitalism, a system that does not
seem particularly yielding or gentle, but is based on the principle that government should "leave alone"
(laissez faire) private property and voluntary exchanges and contracts. The free market would thus be the Not
Doing of government.
When it comes to the five elements, earth, water, and wood are clearly to be associated with
yin. Water, the softest and most yielding element, becomes the supreme symbol of yin and the
Tao in the Tao Te Ching. Fire (the hottest element) and metal (the hardest) both are associated
with yang. Nevertheless, the Blue Dragon, , that symbolizes wood
is a principal symbol of , while the White Tiger, , that
symbolizes metal is a principal symbol of . This kind of reversal turns up
frequently in the I Ching.
The I Ching, , is based on the principle of a broken line, , representing yin, and
an unbroken line, , representing yang. During the Shang Dynasty (1523-1028 BC), questions that could
be answered with a "yes" or a "no" were written on tortoise shells. The shells were heated, then doused in
water, which caused them to crack. A broken crack, , was interpreted as a "no" answer, an unbroken
crack, , as a "yes." The I Ching elaborates on this, by grouping the lines into sets of threes (the trigrams)
and into sets of sixes (the hexagrams).
There are eight trigrams:
Among the trigrams it is noteworthy that in all the children, the sex is determined by the odd line, so that the
trigrams are predominately the opposite quality from the sex of the child. Also, we expect water to be
associated with yin and fire with yang, but water is the second son and fire the second daughter. The other
children are associated with such things as we might expect, e.g. water turns up again in the third daughter as
the Lake.
The arrangement of the trigrams around the compass reflects Chinese geomancy ( ), i.e. the
determination of the auspicious or inauspicious situation and orientation of places (cities, temples, houses, or
graves). Chinese cities are properly laid out as squares, with gates in the middle of the sides facing due north,
east, south, and west. The diagonal directions are then regarded as
special "spirit" gates: northwest is the Heaven Gate; southwest the
Earth Gate; southeast the Man Gate; and northeast the Demon Gate.
The northeast was thus the direction from which malevolent
supernatural influences might particularly be expected. The
situation of the old Japanese capital city of Kyto is particularly
fortunate. To the
northeast is a
conspicuous, twin-
peaked mountain,
Mt. Hiei
(corresponding to the
Mountain trigram),
which is crowned
with a vast
establishment of
Buddhist temples to
guard the Demon
Gate. Later, Tky
(originally called
Edo) was laid out
with temples to the
northeast on rising
ground in the Ueno district; but both the ground and the
temples are now entirely surrounded and obscured by the sprawl of Tky. [note]
The trigrams contrast the Moutain, , with the Lake, . A lake is essentially a valley filed with water
(both with Yin associations), and the mountain in general may be also contrasted with the valley, . We
see this contrast in related characters, such as , "an immortal," and , "common, vulgar, worldly."
Each of these contains the "mountain" and "valley" characters, respectively, with the radical for "person,"
. The idea seems to be that immortal beings live in the mountains, either because that is where the divine
belong (as on Mt. Olympus) or because that it where Taoist adepts, who achieve immortality, practice their
asceticism. Thus, Taoists themselves can be called , the "immortal-ists" or "school of the immortals."
What is down in the valley is then common, mundane, and vulgar.
The I Ching uses the trigrams by combining pairs of them into 64 hexagrams. The hexagrams reuse the
trigrams by combining pairs of them into 64 hexagrams. The hexagrams
represent states of affairs, and the I Ching is consulted through the
construction of a hexagram to answer one's question. The construction is
carried out either through a complicated process of throwing and counting
yarrow stalks, or by throwing three coins. The obverse (head) of each coin is
worth 3 points (odd numbers are yang), while the reverse (tail) is worth 2
(even numbers are yin). Three coins will therefore add up to either 6, 7, 8, or 9.
The numbers 7 and 8 represent "young" yang and yin, respectively. Starting from the bottom up, these add a
plain yang, , or a plain yin, , line. The numbers 6 and 9, in turn, represent "old" yin and yang,
respectively, and are called "changing lines." This illustrates an important aspect of the theory of yin and
yang: Because the "Way of the Tao is Return," yin and yang, when they reach their extremes, actually
become their opposites. The "old" lines therefore change into their opposites,
giving us two hexagrams if any changing lines are involved: the first
hexagram, representing the current state of affairs; and the second hexagram,
after the changes have been made, representing the future state of affairs.
Changing lines are usually denoted by writing for a 9 and for a 6.
The text of the I Ching describes the significance of each hexagram and also
the special meaning to be attached to the presence of any changing lines.
Fantasy Factorial Hexagrams
Chinese Elements and Associations
The Solar Terms and the Chinese Calendar
Psychological Types
Gender Stereotypes and Sexual Archetypes
History of Philosophy, Chinese Philosophy
History of Philosophy
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Copyright (c) 1997, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
Yin & Yng and the I Ching, Note
As it happens, there is a conspicuous mountain north-east of Los Angeles Valley College. Indeed, there is a
whole mountain range, the San Gabriel Mountains. Beyond the lower Verdugo Mountains in the foreground,
which rise to 3126 feet, there is the conspicuous Mt. Lukens in the San Gabriels, which is 5074 feet high.
Behind Mt. Lukens runs Big Tujunga Canyon. There are much higher peaks in the San Gabriels (up to Mt.
San Antonio, "Old Baldy," at 10,064 ft., which is east and outside of the image provided here), as can be seen
in the image, but these are hidden from the perspective of Valley College. Unfortunately, there are no
Buddhist temples, as far as I know, upon Mt. Lukens. Los Angeles could use the protection.
Return to text
Categories of Chinese Characters
Chinese characters are the last ancient ideographic writing system that survives in modern usage. This was a
close call. In Vietnamese, the Latin alphabet is used; in Korean, the hangul phonetic system is now used.
Japanese has its own syllabaries, the kana, which could easily replace characters
altogether, as in the past they sometimes did. Both China and Japan were contemplating a
transition to the Latin alphabet (the Pinyin system prepared the way for this in Chinese).
Ironically, it is the most modern technology which has saved the most ancient writing.
Computer assisted writing makes the use of characters relatively convenient, and the need
for vast metal fonts for printing and even typewriting has now been eliminated.
Although Chinese characters are originally and basically ideographic, writing whole words, the language over
time has become more polysyllabic and many characters now do not occur in isolation. The system thus can
be said to have become morphographic, writing semantic elements of words, morphemes, rather than ideas or
words as wholes. [note]
The characters and their definitions here are from Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary [Harvard, 1972]. The
pronunciation of each character, however, is rendered in Pinyin. There are, understandably, disputes over the
classification system and over the assignment of individual characters. For instance, the very first example,
d, "big," is from the drawing of a man, and so can be considered "pictographic"; but since it doesn't mean
"man," but "big," it might be considered "indicative" instead.
1. Pictographic: These are characters that originate with pictures of the objects in question. In the Shang
Dyansty, these counted for 23% of all characters. By the Han they were down to only 4%, and during
the Sung only 3%. The characters at
right were all originally little
pictures. "Great" was the picture of a
man, while "mountain," "field,"
"woman," "horse," "shield," and
"tree" were just that.
John DeFrancis [The Chinese
Language, Fact and Fantasy,
University of Hawaii Press, 1984,
1986, & Visible Speech, University
of Hawaii Press, 1989], one of the greatest scholars of Chinese, has the view that language (or
meaning) is essentially spoken (i.e. sound) and that pictograms really stand for the words rather than
for the things. However, it seems the most natural to say that a picture of a man, a woman, or a tree
simply represents those things directly. While all writing systems, including Chinese, develop phonetic
elements, the thesis that meaning is essentially sound is destroyed by the use of sign language among
the profoundly deaf, for whom language and meaning have no aural component at all. At one time, it
was not believed that the profoundly deaf had any true language, just because sign language was not
taken seriously; but this view is now insupportable. Indeed, from Plato we already have the observation
that the deaf sign and that this is a logical accommodation to that condition:
SOCRATES: Answer me this question: If we had no voice or tongue, and wished to make
things known to one another, should we not try, as mute [and deaf] people actually do, to
make signs [smanein] with our hands and head and body generally? ["Cratylus," 433 E,
Cratylus, Parmenides, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, translated by F.N. Fowler, Loeb
Classical Library, Harvard, 1926, 1963, p.133]
Sign languages are known to develop and exist with no connection to spoken language, and the form of
signs has its own dynamic, unrelated to sounds. Thus, even as a Chinese character is classified by
radical and phonetic, a sign can be specified by [1] the shape of the hand(s), [2] position(s), [3]
orientation(s), and [4] motion(s) (if any).
2. Simple Indicative or Ideographic: Some abstract concepts can be suggested with certain diagrams,
like simple lines for "one," "two,"
and "three." At right, we also have
"under," "above," and "middle," all
of which bear some relation, as
diagrams, to the meaning. In the
Shang Dynasty, only 2% of
characters were like this. By the
Han and Sung, it was down to only
1%. So these kinds of characters may be frequently used, but there aren't many of them.

3. Compound Indicative or Logical
Aggregates: Multiple examples of the first
two kinds of characters can be combined to
suggest something semantically related to
the original meanings. So at right, we see
"sun" and "moon" combined to mean
"bright," "light," or even "cleanse." Three
"fields" can be combined to mean "fields
divided by dikes." A "woman" under a
"roof" means "quiet," "peace," "tranquility."
Two "women" means "handsome" or
"pretty," and also "cunning." This negative
(misogynistic) suggestion emerges fully with
three "women," which means "adultery,"
"fornication," "licentiousness," "debauch,"
"ravish." Two "trees" get us "forest," and
three are "luxuriant," "overgrown," "dark." Three "stones" is "heap of stone, boulders." Note that there
are altenative, radical and phonetic versions, given with the lei (boulders) and jiao (handsome)
characters. In the Shang Dynasty, 41% of the characters were of this compound indicative type. In the
Han it was 13%, and in the Sung only 3%. It is sometimes said that the Chinese character for "trouble"
shows two women under one roof. Such a character is possible, and would look like this , but
there actually is no such Chinese character, though I understand that the myth lives on the internet.
Meanwhile, the character , which is a pig under a roof, means "a house, family, home, relatives," or
a member of a class or school. We can imagine that this goes back to the conditions of rural life where
people and farm animals might share the same dwelling, even as pork is still a conspicuous part of
traditional Chinese cooking.
4. The most common Chinese characters are of the Radical and Phonetic or Phonetic Complex form.
These combine other characters either side by side or above and below. The constituent character called
the "Radical" gives some clue about the meaning and, more importantly, is the basis for the listing of
the character in Chinese dictionaries (where 214 traditional Radicals are used). The constituent
character called the "Phonetic" gives some clue about the pronunciation, which is usually similar to that
of the original character. In the Shang Dynasty, only 34% of characters (or 334 actual characters) were
of this type. By the Han Dynasty, it was up to 82% (or 7697), the Sung up to 93% (21,810), and in the
Ch'ing radical and phonetic characters were 97% (or 47,141) of the total. Clearly, this device becomes
the most productive way of generating new characters in Chinese. It is also unique among Old World
ideographic writing systems. Nothing similar is seen in Egyptian hieroglyphics, for instance, where the
phonology of a word is indicated by writing extra, purely phonetic, glyphs. The exception, however, is
in the New World, where Mayan glyphs, recently deciphered, include both ideographic and phonetic
elements, just like Chinese characters. Mayan glyphs, however, fully specify the phonology (according
to the current understanding), not just suggest it, as with the Chinese.
In the diagram at right, the basic phonetic
value of "horse" (ma) turns up in the purely
phonetic interrogative particle, and in a word
for "mother." The character for "to tie, bind"
occurred as a phonetic in the alternative
character given above for "heap of
stone/boulders" (lei). The "fields" compound
character above (lei again) occurs as a
phonetic with the character for "stone" to mean
"roll stones down hill." "Shield" (gan) occurs
with "sun" in "sunset," with "woman" in
"crafty," villainous," "false," and with "tree" in
"shaft of a spear," "pole." "Middle" occurs
with the radical "heart," zhong, to mean
"conscientious," "loyal," "honest," etc. It is these characters that provide some of the evidence for the
reconstruction of the pronunciation of earlier forms of Chinese.
Since radical and phonetic characters already exist in the Shang Dynasty, there clearly was a long
period of development prior to this. But the evidence for this is scant, and the ultimate origin of
Chinese characters is unclear.

Dialects of Chinese
Philosophy of History
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Copyright (c) 2000, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2013 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
Categories of Chinese Characters, note
Since Chinese characters originally wrote whole words, it is now fashionable to say that they are "logograms"
(logos = "word") rather than "ideograms." On this view, Chinese characters (or the units of any such such
writing system) have no meaning apart from the words of Chinese. They are derivative of the words and are
semantically, functionally, and even ontologically dependent on them. The notion that the characters could
exist independently of the words, or of the Chinese langauge, is incomprehensible.
As noted, this is already rather behind the development of Chinese, where characters usually write
morphemes. However, the principal reason for the change in terms is ideological rather than linguistic.
Because of the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ferdinand de Saussure, the view has grown that
language is a self-contained and self-referential system, without connection to the external world or to truth.
Because of this, the notion that there are "ideas" or concepts that
exist independently of language and embody meanings with a real
relationship to the world has fallen into disfavor. So "ideogram"
must go.
Unfortunately, those who are at pains to demonstrate their adherence
to fashionable opinion have missed the point. The issue is not
whether ideas or truth exist, but whether a writing system like
Chinese characters directly matches up with spoken language. It
doesn't. This is the most conspicuous in something like Ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphics, where certain glyphs are "generic
determinatives," which correspond to no words in the language but
give a clue as to the general meaning of the word being written. As it
happens, Chinese has something rather like generic determinatives,
i.e. the "radical" which is that part of the character that gives a clue
to the meaning and functions as the basis of classifying characters in a Chinese dictionary. These visual
elements of the written language do a job where the written language may not fully represent the sounds of
spoken language, which is what happens in Egyptian or Chinese. The written language does it in its own way,
and so takes on a life of its own.
Since the fashionable view is that language is self-referential, we might wonder why opinion could not move
over to the view that written language breaks away from the spoken language and takes on a self-contained
life of its own. Clinging to the notion that written language refers to spoken language would seem to
contradict part of the fashionable thesis, that there is no external reference. Indeed. But the move does not
take place, perhaps because the connection of the written to
the spoken language is too obvious (though one might think
that their connection to the world would then be equally
obvious, which it isn't to the bien pensants), but perhaps even
more so because of an old prejudice that language can only
exist as spoken language. This latter assertion is actually
made by John DeFrancis in the work cited in the text above --
and reconfirmed to me in personal correspondence.
The notion that language can only truly consist of sounds is
refuted by the existence of fully functioning sign languages
among the profoundly deaf. Indeed, there are now cases
where deaf children, with no previous contact with other deaf
individuals, have been introduced together into new schools
for the deaf and have spontaneously and quickly developed a
completely new sign language between themselves. In the
past, the possibility that sign languages could be the
equivalent of spoken language was simply not believed, and
even educators of the deaf thought that signs could properly
only be used to spell the words of spoken languages. Word of
the existence of true sign languages of the deaf has apparently still not reached everyone.
The truth is that visual (whether written or sign) and spoken languages match up to each other by way of
meaning. There are ideas, concepts, and reference. That is why languages can be translated into each other --
though, indeed, there are philosophers, like W.V.O. Quine, in the self-referential tradition, who openly assert
the "indeterminacy of translation," as though this were not contradicted by centuries of actual translating. The
existence of meaning has been ably demonstrated by Jerrold Katz. Thus, Chinese characters, which write
ideas, as spoken language speaks them (with, we might say, "ideophones" -- sounds that speak ideas), are
ideograms. Since they historically correspond to Chinese words or morphemes, they can also be called
logograms or morphograms. Since they often
originally consisted of pictures of objects,
they can also be called "pictograms," a term
also in fashionable disfavor. If there are
pictures of objects, after all, we might need
to admit that there are objects, and that
language has something to do with them. It
is a shame when something so obvious
becomes shocking to educated opinion.
Why there is now this ideological preference
is a good question. Such theories, however,
are conformable to the "deconstructionist" or
"post-modern" view that everything is a matter of power relationships -- something about equally inspired by
Marx and by Nietzsche -- and unrelated to any actual truth or reality, except a political reality. People writing
about Chinese characters may not be aware of all the connections of the theories they promote, but it is
usually the academic water within which they swim.
Return to text
The Dialects of Chinese
What are usually called the "dialects" of Chinese are really separate
languages, all descended from the Chinese of the T'ang Dynasty.
They are all about as far apart from each other now as English and
Dutch. However, they are all written with the same characters (with
some exceptions), which means that an educated person can
understand (mostly) their written forms, and for cultural and
political reasons, as well as their historical origin, are regarded by
the Chinese as part of the same language. A new term has even
been introduced for this unusual situation, calling the languages
"topolects," i.e. speech of the "place," topos.
The picture of the languages has changed somewhat over the years.
Older sources (e.g. John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language, Fact
and Fantasy, Hawaii, 1984; S. Robert Ramsey, The Languages of
China, Princeton, 1987; and Nathan Sivin, editor, The
Contemporary Atlas of China, Houghton Mifflin, 1988) say that
there are seven different languages, or six, since sometimes Gan is
linked with Hakka, or with Xiang. More recently, Lynn Pan, in The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas
[Harvard, 1999], lists ten languages, where Jin is separated from Mandarin, Hui from Wu, and Pinghua from
Yue. Now, however, in The Sino-Tibetan Languages, edited by Graham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla
[Routledge Language Family Series, Routledge, London, 2003], Jerry Norman ("The Chinese Dialects:
Phonology") states, "If one takes mutual intelligibility as the criterion for defining the difference between
dialect and language, then one would have to recognize not eight [or seven, etc.] but hundreds of 'languages'
in China" [p.72]. This appears to resolve the issue. What previously were regarded as separate languages, like
Cantonese, are in fact families of languages. It is therefore not surprising that the "splitters" (those who like to
divide groups, as opposed to "lumpers," who like to combine groups -- a typological difference) should begin
to divide the old languages into new ones. If there are really "hundreds"
of languages involved, however, further splitting becomes pointless.
On the map at left, we see China of the late Empire divided by the
ethnic principle of the "five peoples." While the Hui, , might be
Turks or Uighurs, the term in general means "Muslims" and thus
applies to ethnic Chinese Muslims. Those Hui speak Mandarin and tend
to live in the area identified for the Han, , People on the map.
Otherwise, the dialects of Chinese all refer to languages of the Han
People. Manchurian has all but disappeared and been replaced by Mandarin.
Within each of the groups of Chinese languages, there are also true dialects, which means that they are
mutually intelligible. In Pan's book and The Sino-Tibetan Languages many dialects are shown for the
language groups. The confusion over all this -- couldn't everyone tell what forms of speech are mutually
intelligible? -- was certainly due to the difficulties of doing research in China in the 20th century. From
revolution, to war, to revolution, to totalitarianism, China until recently was not the best place for graduate
students wandering around with tape recorders asking strange questions. Such behavior would often have
evoked suspicion, arrest, or worse. Of course, there is also the problem of distinguishing dialects from
languages in general, when dialects may be intelligible to those nearby, while those at the extreme ends of a
range may be incomprehensible to each other.
The table gives a classification of languages and dialects based on a
combination of The Sino-Tibetan Languages and other sources.
The 10 languages identified on the map from Pan's The
Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas are given in boldface; but
the overall organization is in terms of the three groups and six
"dialect familes" of The Sino-Tibetan Languages [p.6]. While Gan
and Xiang and now definitely separated, Hakka has come to be
included under Gan -- though this is not consistently seen in the
book. "Hakka" itself is an interesting term, in Mandarin,
in Cantonese, meaning "guest, visitor, traveller, stranger,
merchant," or "customer." Althought there is a concentrated area of
Hakka speakers, the language is otherwise spoken in widely
scattered areas, where it has been taken by, indeed, Hakka traders.
"Mandarin" is a word from Sanskrit (mantrin) by way of Malay (menteri) and Portuguese (mandarim). This
meant "counselor." The word was applied because the Portuguese were originally dealing with traders along
the southern coast of China, where, of course, many languages were spoken, but not Mandarin. When
officials from the Capital came down to deal with the Portuguese, they spoke a different language, which the
Portuguese had not otherwise encountered. Hence the name, the language of the "counselors". However, this
may also have simply been a translation of what the counselors were calling their own language, which was
the , "Official Language," or even "Language of the Officials," i.e. the Mandarins [note]. In Modern
Chinese, Mandarin is the , "Common Language," or the , "National Language." These
same expressions are used in Cantonese, pronounced differently of course, where we also find ,
the "Beijing Language," pronounced Pak-king-wa.
Some population figures are given for the older seven language classification. These are given as percentages
of the total Chinese speaking population, as a number in millions (M), and, from another source, as a number
in thousands (k). These count those for whom the languages are their first languages. The figure of
952,000,000 speakers for Mandarin given elsewhere is for people who speak Mandarin at all. This is
considerably larger than the 715 million number below, not just because the population has grown in the last
twenty years, but also because Mandarin in the national language of China, taught in schools around the
country. Areas where the languages are spoken are given after the language name(s). Names of cities and
provinces in Pinyin are given in italics. I have now added new population figures, after a dash, which are
taken from The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2008 [World Almanac Books, 2008, p.728]. The Almanac
gives the first figures I've seen for Puxian, which is now evidently often broken off of Min, as Jin is broken
off of Mandarin.
Northern
Mandarin, , North, Southwest, 71.5%, 715 M, 679,250 k -- 873 M
Northern
Northern, Peking,
Jin(yu), ( ), Shanxi -- 45 M
Northwestern, Kansu [Gansu]
Southern, Nanking,
Southwestern, Szechwan [Sichuan]
Central
W, , Shanghai, Zhejiang, 8.5%, 85 M, 80,750 k -- 77 M
W (I), Suzhou, Shanghai
W (II), Wenzhou, Chekiang [Zhejiang]
Hui(yu), ( ), Anhui
Gn, , Kiangsi [Jiangxi], 2.4%, 24 M, 22,800 k -- 20 M
Hakka, , Guandong, Jiangxi, scattered, 3.7%, 37 M, 35,150 k -- 29 M
Xiang, , Hunan, 4.8%, 48 M, 45,600 k -- 36 M
Old Xiang, countryside
New Xiang, NW Hunan, cities
Southern
Min, , Fukien [Fujian], 4.1%, 41 M, 38,950 k
Northern Min, Foochow [Fuzhou], 1.3%, 13 M
Dialect Family Initials Finals Tones Syllables
Mandarin,
16 39 4 2496
Gan,
19 59 6 6726
Hakka,
17 69 6 7038
Xiang,
23 37 6 5106
Min,
15 57 7 5985
Wu/Shanghai,
27 50 7 9450
Yue/Cantonese,
20 53 9 9540
Northern Min, -- 10 M
Eastern Min, , Fuzhou -- 9 M
Puxian Min, , Putian & Xianyou -- 2 M
Southern Min, , Amoy-Swatow [Xiamen], 2.8%, 28 M -- 46 M
Yu, , Cantonese, Guandong, Guangxi, 5.0%, 50 M, 47,500 k -- 54 M
Pingua, , Guangxi
It is noteworthy that the extension of
Mandarin into the Southwest was in part the
result of veterans being settled there after the
Mongols were ejected from China and the
Ming Dynasty founded.
The table is a comparison of dialect families
from The Sino-Tibetan Languages [p.127].
The statistics, of course, are from
representative languages in each group. I have
rearranged the list to move the apparently
more conservative languages towards the
bottom of the table, though, of course, not all
the indications are consistent. With the largest
number of tones and of syllables, Cantonese
wins as the most conservative, but then Xiang
and Shanghai both have more initials than
Cantonese -- and Hakka has an anomalously
large number of finals and syllables.
Mandarin has clearly undergone the greatest
phonetic simplification.
Examples of Dialect Differences Between Peking, Shanghai and, Canton
Pronouncing Mandarin Initials
Mandarin Finals and Syllables
The Contrast between Classical and Modern Chinese
Shanghai Peking
Philosophy of Science, Linguistics
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The Dialects of Chinese, Note
The word "Mandarin" has also been explained as derived from Chinese, as , "Manchu great man"
[cf. Dah-an Ho, "The Characteristics of Mandarin Dialects," The Sino-Tibetan Languages, p.127]. However,
this looks very much like a folk etymology, and an anachronistic one, since the Portuguese had been in China
more than a century (since 1518) before the Manchus took over the country (1644). The language of the
officials was going to be called something long before any officials were Manchurian.
There is also the problem of the pronunciation: probably was not pronounced with an r in the era in
question. The Wade-Giles writing of the syllable, jen, reflects an older pronunciation, which we see reflected
as a y in Cantonese and an actual English-like j in Japanese. Indeed, this is probably why "Japan,"
, is pronounced in English as it is, with an older Chinese pronunciation -- in Japanese itself,
the j/y/r can and does here turn up here an n.
I have now found some good evidence of the anachronism, as I suggest, of this claim. "Mandarin" was used
in reference to Chinese officials as early as 1552 by the Portuguese writer Ferno Lopez de Castanheda in his
Historia do descobrimento e conquista da India. The text is cited by Yule & Burnell in their classic A
Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases ["Hobson-Jobson," Curzon Press, 1886, 1985,
"Mandarin," p.550-551].
Return to Text
Examples of Dialect Differences Between
Peking, Shanghai and, Canton
In the table superscript numbers are the tones, and brackets contain Pinyin writings (with superscript tones
where HTML does not contain the appropriate diacritic).
p-
pu
1
"wave" po
1
[bo
1
]
p'-
p'u
1
"slope" p'o
1
[po
1
]
b-
bu
2
"old woman" p'o
2
[p]
t-
tong
1
"east" tong
1
[dong
1
]
t'-
t'ong
1
"be open" t'ong
1
[tong
1
]
d-
dong
2
"be alike" t'ong
2
[tng]
k-
kuong
1
"light" kuang
1
[guang
1
]
k'-
k'uong
1
"frame" k'uang
1
[kuang
1
]
g-
guong
2
"mad, wild" k'uang
2
[kung]
Cantonese Peking
-t/0
kat
7a
"cough" k'e
2
(sou
4
) [k(su)]
-t/0
pat
7a
"brush" pi
3
[bi
3
]
-t/0
yt
7b/8
"moon" yeh
4
[yu]
-t/0
yat
7a/8
"sun, day" jih
4
[r]
-k/0
paak
7b
"hundred" pai
3
[bai
3
]
-k/0
sik
7a
"color" (yen
2
)se
4
[(yn)s]
-k/0
kwok
7b
y
4
"national language"
kou
2
y
3
[guyu
3
]
-p/0
t'aap
7b
"pagoda" t'a
3
[ta
3
]
-p/0
yap
8
"enter" ju
4
[r]
-p/0
sap
8
"ten" shih
2
[sh]
The Wu ( ) dialect of Shanghai is noteworthy
because it retains the distinction between voiced and
unvoiced, aspirated and unaspirated stops that existed in
T'ang Chinese. In Mandarin the voiced stops have
disappeared. In these examples, the voiced stops have
seen assimilated to the aspirated ones.
Cantonese ( ) is noteworthy because it retains from
T'ang Chinese a greater variety of finals. In Mandarin, a
syllable must end in a vowel or in n or ng. In Cantonese,
syllables can also end in p, t, k, or m as well. Words
borrowed from Chinese into Korean, Japanese, and
Vietnamese often also preserve evidence of the older
final consonants. Thus "China"
(Mandarin Zhonggu, "Middle
Country") in Korean is Chung-guk
and in Japanese Ch-koku. Both of
them have an extra consonant in
"country" where Mandarin doesn't --
but Cantonese (Jong-gwok) does.
I had a lingustics professor once who said that you could
get a kind of "instant Proto-Indo-European" by
combining Greek vowels and Sanskrit consonants. Well,
we can get a kind of "instant T'ang Chinese" by
combining Shanghai initials and Cantonese finals. The
evidence is poor for older versions of Chinese.
Cantonese also preserves the larger number of tones that
T'ang Chinese had. Mandarin only
has four now, but Cantonese has six,
or even nine if the tones of finals that
end in stops are counted separately,
which they sometimes are.
The most daring theory is that the
Chinese of Confucius's day didn't
even have tones. Evidence for this is
that other members of the Sino-Tibetan language family
do not have tones, while the nearby family of the Daic languages (like Thai) all have tones. In another
adjacent language family, the Austroasiatic (Mon-Khmer) group, some languages have tones (like
Vietnamese) and others do not. It is tempting to see the phenomenon as a South-East Asian Sprach Bund
where the Daic tones have influenced some languages in the Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic families.
At left are examples of the Cantonese tones, using the notation in Teach Yourself Cantonese by R. Bruce
[Teach Yourself Books, Hodder and Stoughton, 1970, 1976, pp.12-13]. Different tone symbols are not
needed for the 7th, 8th, and 9th tones (in other treatments, as in the table above, the 7th and 8th tones are
styled 7a and 7b, while the 9th tone becomes the 8th). These words will look different in A Concise
Cantonese-English Dictionary by Yang Mingxin [Guangdong Higher Education Publishing House, 1999].
First of all, the latter uses an adapted Pinyin alphabet, where "x" is used for "s" and "g" for final "k." Second,
although Pinyin introduced the use of Greek-like accents to show tones, the Dictionary reverts to the old
Wade-Giles way of simply numbering the tones with superscripts. Also, the
Dictionary uses simplified forms of some of the characters. I have used the
unsimplified characters in Bruce where these are available. The Yale system of
Romanization, with discussion of some alternatives (though not the Pinyin) is used in
the English-Cantonese Dictionary, by Kwan Choi Wah, et al. [The Chinese
University Press, Hong Kong, 1991].
Dictionaries or grammars of Shanghai Chinese in English seem to all be out of print.
A nice example of a difference between Mandarin and Cantonese is a surname. This
is W in the former, Ng in the latter. The Cantonese name is one of many words that
are simply a syllabic ng. There is also a syllabic m in Cantonese, which is , "not,"
in Mandarin. That is the only word with that pronunciation in A Concise Cantonese-
English Dictionary [pp.260-262]. Although it seems like there ought to be, there is no
syllabic n in Cantonese. There is more than one character
used for the Cantonese surname. At right, we see the traditional character first, then
a recent simplified one to the right of the pronunciation. This was also the name of the Kingdom of Wu, one
of the states of the Three Kingdoms Period in Chinese history, and of the modern language of Shanghai. At
far right is an alternative character used, at least in Cantonese, for the surname. My only question is that the
first character (with its simplification) and the second are pronounced differently. In Mandarin, the first has a
2nd tone, the second a 3rd. In Cantonese, the first has a 4th tone, the second a 5th (with the symbols used in
Teach Yourself Cantonese). I originally learned of the two possible characters from a young woman whose
name actually was Ng, but I didn't know then to ask about the different tones. Perhaps someone can help me
out.
Note that the Cantonese spellings in the table above are from Teach Yourself Cantonese, while, as noted, A
Concise Cantonese-English Dictionary uses a form of Pinyin adapted from Mandarin. Thus, words
traditionally ending in t/k/p are written d/g/b in the latter.
Dialects of Chinese
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Copyright (c) 2000, 2005, 2006 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
Simple Initials
Pinyin Wade-Giles Pronunication
b p p, unaspirated (spot)
p p'
p
h
, aspirated (pot)
m m m
f f f
d t t, unaspirated (stop)
t t'
t
h
, aspirated (top)
n n n
l l l
g k k, unaspirated (skit)
k k'
k
h
, aspirated (kit)
h h h
Sibilant Initials
z ts ts, unaspirated
c ts
t
h
s, aspirated (hats)
s s s
Retroflex Initials
zh ch t.s., unaspirated
ch ch'
t.
h
s., aspirated
sh sh s.
r j r
Chinese has the extraordinary structure that nearly every syllable has a semantic content, even if only a
historical one. Each syllable is thus written with a Chinese character, which was originally a separate word.
Each syllable is analyzed into an "intitial" and a "final." The "final" contains the vowel, the tone, and the final
consonant, if any. This structure is also applied to Korean
and Vietnamese, which borrowed Chinese writing and
many Chinese words, even though neither language was
even related to Chinese.
The "initials," apart from the tones, pose the greatest
challenge for foreigners trying to pronounce Chinese. And
now we have two common systems for writing Mandarin,
the older Wade-Giles and the recent Pinyin. The greatest
challenge is that Mandarin does not have voiced stops,
like b, d, and g. These existed in T'ang Chinese (and have
been preserved in the Shanghai or Wu language), but have
been lost in Mandarin. Instead, Mandarin contrasts
aspirated stops with unaspirated stops. "Aspirates" have
breath coming out, "unaspirates" don't. In Wade-Giles,
aspirates were indicated with an apostrophe, as in the
name of the T'ang Dynasty. Sometimes it is said that an
aspirated t is pronounced like the t in "hot house." This
not quite right, since the t there is in a separate syllable,
and a separate word, from the "h" aspiration. Instead, it
should be noted that English contrasts, in certain
environments, an aspirated from an unaspirated t. Thus
the t in "top" is aspirated, and the t in "stop" is
unaspirated. Holding a hand in front of the mouth can
detect the breath expelled in one and not expelled in the
other. The Chinese unaspirated t can be duplicated by
pronouncing "stop" without the "s." Aspirations are
indicated in the "pronunciation" column of the table with
a superscript h.
Since there are no voiced stops in Mandarin, the Pinyin
system conveniently uses the Latin letters for the voiced
stops for unaspriated stops, and the Latin letters for the
unvoiced stops for the aspirated stops. The English word
"stop" thus could be written in Pinyin as "sdob," which
looks very odd, and has a final consonant unallowed by
Mandarin, but does use the proper values of the Pinyin
consonants.
The "retroflex" initials have the tongue curling up, as in
the similar series of sounds in Sanskrit and subsequent
languages in India. But other Chinese dialects do not
distinguish retroflex from palatal initials. In fact, even in
Mandarin, retroflexes and palatals are really just different
allophones (sounds) of the same phonemes, i.e. they do
Palatal Initials
j ch tsh, unaspirated
q ch'
t
h
sh, aspirated (church)
x hs sh
Simple Initials and Group-a Finals
Initials
Finals
n ng i o

a an ang ai ao
b ba ban bang bai bao
p pa pan pang pai pao
m m ma man mang mai mao
not occur in the same environment and so can actually be
represented by the same signs (as in Wade-Giles).
Retroflexes (and sibilants) occur only with a, o/e, and u
finals. Palatals occur only with i and finals. The "i"
written with sibilants and retroflexes, e.g. "si" and "zhi,"
does not represent a true i, but a "buzzing" for sibiliants
and an r for retroflexes.
The Wade-Giles system represents Chinese more
efficiently and familiarly. Pinyin, besides the phonemic
redundancy, has the drawback that the sound of a number of letters (like q and x) has nothing to do with how
they are pronounced in most Western languages. On the other hand, Pinyin makes a more elegant use of the
Latin alphabet.
Dialects of Chinese
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Each syllable in Chinese is analyzed into an "intitial"
and a "final." Initials of Mandarin are considered in
the section above. The "final" contains the vowel, the
tone, and the final consonant, if any. The tables here
show nearly all the possible syllables in the Standard
form of Mandarin Chinese, i.e. the Mandarin of
Peking (Beijing). This is not actually all the syllables
because of the "Group-r" finals. Those are added
either as "er" or "r" to the syllables shown. After a, o,
e, u, and ng, "r" is added. After ai, an, and en, drop the
i or n and add "r." After i and , add "er." and With
"i," in, and un, drop the i or n and add "er."
The "Group-a" finals go with the simple, the retroflex,
f

fa fan fang
d da dan dang dai dao
t ta tan tang tai tao
n na nan nang nai nao
l la lan lang lai lao
g ga gan gang gai gao
k ka kan kang kai kao
h ha han hang hai hao
Retroflex & Sibilant Initials and Group-a Finals
Initials
Finals
"i" a an ang ai ao
zh zhi zha zhan zhang zhai zhao
ch chi cha chan chang chai chao
sh shi sha shan shang shai shao
r ri ran rang rao
z zi za zan zang zai zao
c ci ca can cang cai cao
s si sa san sang sai sao
Simple Initials and Group-o/e Finals
Initials
Finals
n ng i u ng
e en eng ou

b bo ben beng bei
p po pe pen peng pei pou
m mo

men meng mei mou
f fo fen feng fei fou
d de

deng dei dou dong
t te teng tou tong
and the sibilant initials. The "i" final only occurs with
the retrolex and sibilant initials, and represents a
vowel with little kinship to an actual i. For the
retroflexes, it is more of an r sound, while with the
sibilants it is a vowel so reduced and indefinite that it
is described as a "buzzing." Indeed, in the Yale
system of transcription, the former is rendered with
"r" and the latter with "z." Wade-Giles uses "ih" (or
"tzu" for Pinyin zi, etc.), thus distinguishing it from
the simple "i" used with the palatals. In this way,
neither Pinyin nor Wade-Giles give much of a clue
from English phonology how to make the sound.
Since the "i" is the only letter i that is not used with
the "Group-i" finals and the palatal initials, its
presence rather confuses the symmetry of the system,
although there is no ambiguity (I will not say
confusion), since "i" does only occur with the
retroflex and sibilant initials. It is a cleaner and more
elegant solution than in Wade-Giles. Since Pinyin was
willing to pick phonetic values of the Latin alphabet
from different languages, the undotted Turkish I
might have been considered for the "i" sound, though
this is not available in HTML and is, as noted,
unnecessary.
Otherwise, the vowels in the table are as they are in
Wade-Giles. The syllabic m in included in the table
just as a reminder that there is such a thing in
Cantonese. In the index row, the tone is written over
the vowel to show, where there might be ambiguity,
which vowel is used.
With the "Group o/e" finals a major difference
between Pinyin and Wade-Giles is that the latter
writes the "ong" final as "ung." Since one may be
used to seeing words like "Chung" in English, its
absence from Pinyin is conspicuous.
Of priniciple interest here in the phonetic system
is the lack of contrast between the o and e finals.
Where the final o is used, e is not; and where e is
used, o is not. That this was not always the case
is shown with two anomalous syllables against a
blue background. Pe and ho used to occur, but
they do no longer. The only minimal pairs with
o/e are those with contrasting eng and ong finals,
though there are a good number of these.
The pe syllable is found in the name "Peking,"
which now, with the Pinyin Beijing being used,
people might just think of as some kind of
mistake. It is not a mistake, just a transcription of
Simple Initials and Group-u Finals
Initials
Finals
u u ui u un n ung ung
wu wa wo wai wi wan wen wang weng
b bu

p pu
m mu
f fu
d du

duo

dui duan dun

t tu tuo tui tuan tun
n nu nuo

nuan
l lu luo luan lun
g gu gua guo guai gui guan gun guang
k ku kua kuo kuai kui kuan kun kuang
n nen neng nei nou nong
l le len leng lei lou long
g ge gen geng gei gou gong
k ke ken keng kei kou kong
h ho he hen heng hei hou hong
Retroflex & Sibilant Initials and Group-o/e Finals
Initials
Finals
o e en eng ei ou ong
zh

zhe zhen zheng zhei zhou zhong
ch che chen cheng chou chong
sh she shen sheng shei shou
r re ren reng rou rong
z ze zen zeng zei zou zong
c ce cen ceng

cou cong
s se sen seng sou song
an older form of pronunication in Mandarin,
where pe existed, and where the palatals in the
"Group-i" finals had not yet developed from their
original stops -- the word is still king in
Cantonese and was borrowed as ky into
Japanese.
A difference between Pinyin and Wade-Giles that
would also apply to the "Group-a" finals above is
the initial r. In Wade-Giles, that is written j,
which, pronounced r, must produce for Wade-
Giles as much confusion as q and x in Pinyin.
Again, this reflects some history. Since the r
corresponds to a y in Cantonese (yat for r), and
is often borrowed as (English) j into Japanese
(e.g. jin for rn), writing j in Wade-Giles reflects
the circumstance that this is pronounced y in
German but j in English (the y pronunciation
being the original value of j as a modification of
Latin i). However, the letter is also borrowed as n
into Japanese (e.g. nichi for r), and r itself does
not look much like a natural derivative of either y
or j. So there seems to have been something else
going on in the original Chinese sound, which
may have been more an than a y.
In the Group-u finals, uo often
turns up as just o in Wade-
Giles. Otherwise, we see a lot
of possible syllables that are
not used. A curiosity in both
systems is that ui is actually
pronounced more like u (with
the accent from French). Wei
is written more like it is
pronounced (with the anomaly
that the tone goes on the e).
That all this is the case may be
because the Mandarin e in
isolation has more of the
reduced, schwa-like sound that
is familar from many
occurrences in English (the last
a in "banana"), French (le), and
German (Tne). We don't get a
pure Italian e or French in
Mandarin.
h hu hua huo huai hui huan hun huang
Retroflex & Sibilant Initials and Group-u Finals
Initials
Finals
u ua uo uai ui uan un uang ueng
zh zhu zhua zhuo zhuai zhui zhuan zhun zhuang
ch chu chuo chuai chui chuan chun chuang
sh shu shua shuo shuai shui shuan shun shuang
r ru

ruo

rui ruan run

z zu zuo zui zuan zun
c cu cuo cui cuan cun
s su suo sui suan sun
Simple Initials and Group-i Finals
Initials
Finals
i io i i in n ing ng ing
yi ya yao ye yu yan yin yang ying yong
b bi

biao bie

bian bin

bing

p pi piao pie pian pin ping
m mi miao mie miu mian min ming
d di diao die diu dian

ding
t ti tiao tie tian ting
n ni niao nie niu nian nin niang ning
l li lia liao lie liu lian lin liang ling
Palatal Initials and Group-i Finals
Initials
Finals
i ia iao ie iu ian in iang ing iong
j ji jia jiao jie jiu jian jin jiang jing jiong
q qi qia qiao qie qiu qian qin qiang qing qiong
x xi xia xiao xie xiu xian xin xiang xing xiong
With the "Group-i" finals, we
see a number of systematic
differences between Pinyin and
Wade-Giles. Ian here turns up
as ien in Wade-Giles, and iong
as iung. Although written ian,
the a is a reduced vowel
pronounced still more like the e
discussed above.
We also see the most unfamiliar
use of letters in Pinyin, with q
for Wade-giles ch' and x for hs -
- which itself was simply an
alternative to sh. X actually is
used to write sh in some
languages (e.g. Basque). I am
not aware of q being used
anywhere to write any variation
of English ch. However,
whether intentional or not, this
evokes a bit of the history, since
q usually is pronounced like k,
and q in Pinyin is used with an
initial that, although now a ch,
was actually an original k. If
that was the intention, in the use
of q, it was cleverly done.
Simple and Palatal Initials and Group- Finals
Initials
Finals
n n
y yue yuan yn
j ju jue juan jun
q qu que quan qun
x xu xue xuan xun
n n ne

l l le
The "Group-" finals feature the vowel , written and
pronounced like the u-Umlaut in German (also used
now in Turkish). This is the sound i with lip-rounding,
and so, being a front vowel like i, is found with the
palatal initials of the "Group-i" vowels.
Where Wade-Giles did not distinguish between
retroflex and palatal initials with different letters, it did
so by the circumstance that the palatals only occurred
with "Group-i" and "Group-" finals. Thus the was
always fully written. Since Pinyin does differentiate the
initials with different letters, the need for the Umlaut,
to separate "Group-u" from "Group-" finals, is mostly
eliminated. However, some writers do not seem to
realize that this is not universally the case. Where the
initials are n or l, the Umlaut is still necessary. Thus, l
is sometimes improperly written as lu in Pinyin. The
retention of the Umlaut does create some graphic difficulties, since the tone must be written atop it in n and
l, something that fonts may not often be called upon to do. Otherwise, its loss is a convenient simplification.
Dialects of Chinese
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The Contrast between Classical and Modern Chinese
Although both ancient and modern Chinese are mostly written with the same characters, the modern daughter
languages have become very different from the ancient one. One of the most conspicious differences is just
that the terse, monosyllabic nature of Classical Chinese -- , "old writing," or , "literary
language" -- has given way to many more particles, polysyllabic words, and periphrastic
idioms. The following story, given in both Classical Chinese and a translation into
modern Mandarin, -- or the , "colloquial speech, vernacular" --
illustrates the difference. This is also a salutary example for one's view of government, as
Confucius indeed makes clear to his students. [I am unaware of the origin of this text.]
The modern Mandarin pronunciation is given for the Classical characters because the ancient pronuncation,
indeed the pronunciation before the T'ang Dynasty, is unknown. Even that of the T'ang is reconstructed and
uncertain. The extreme simplifiction of Mandarin phonology, which would render the Classical language
ambiguous if used as a spoken language today (too many words now being pronounced the same), explains
the polysyllablic character of the modern language and the reduction of many characters to morphemes.
The same Classical text that can today be read as Mandarin could as well be read with Korean, Vietnamese,
or Japanese versions of the Chinese words, or the Korean, Vietnamese, or Japanese translations of the words.
None of those languages is even related to Chinese, but since mediaeval, or even modern, Koreans,
Vietnamese, and Japanese often wrote in Chinese, without, however, really speaking the language, their own
renderings of the characters was customary. Since the ancient pronunciation of the Classical language is
unknown, Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, and Sino-Japanese reading are really just as "authentic" for
Classical Chinese as a Modern Mandarin reading. Indeed, much of our evidence for the T'ang pronuncation of
Chinese is from the Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese readings, which were contemporary borrowings.
For example, the character for "mountain," now read shan in Mandarin, turns up as san in Korean,
in Vietnamese as so
.
n or ni, and in Japanese as san, sen, zan, or yama -- the last versions in
Vietnamese and Japanese being the native words. Similarly, we find the name of
Japan itself, "Sun Source," as Rben [Wade-Giles Jihpn] in Mandarin, Yatbon
in Cantonese, Ilbon in Korean, Nh.t-Bn in Vietnamese, and Nippon or Nihon
in Japanese. The Cantonese word is, of course, cognate to the Mandarin. The Korean,
Vietnamese, and Japanese are all borrowings from Chinese, pronounced in the local
manner. Native words for "sun" are hae in Korean, ma.t gi
.
i ("face of the sky") in Vietnamese, and hi in
Japanese (e.g. hi-no-maru, "circle of the sun," "sundisk"). The Japanese borrowed word for "sun" in isolation
is nichi, but this is just the pronunciation of niti, where the final i as been added because Japanese syllables
cannot end in t. In compounds, the i can drop out, so nichi-hon (*hi-moto in the unused pure Japanese
reading) becomes nit-hon. At that point different things can happen. The t can be lost in assimilation to the h,
getting us Nihon, OR the h can revert to its original p, with the t getting assimilated and doubled with it,
getting us Nippon.
Another example concerns the present capital of Japan. The Mng
capitals of China were Nnjing (Nanking) and then Beijing (Peking),
which simply mean, respectively, "Southern Capital" and "Northern
Capital." The capital of Japan from 794 to 1868 was Kyto, which
meant "Capital District." Then the capital was moved to Edo, which
was renamed the "Eastern Capital." In Chinese that would be
Dongjing. In Japanese, however, that is pronounced Tky. In Vietnamese it is ng-
Kinh (or Tonkin). The Vietnamese version preserves more of the Chinese consonants, but
both Japanese and Vietnamese versions reveal that "capital" originally started with a k,
which has become palatalized (to a j) in Mandarin. The k is also preserved in early
modern Western versions of Chinese words, like "Nanking" and "Peking" themselves.
Chinese departments in colleges sometimes expect students to learn Mandarin even
though they only want to read Classical Chinese or Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, or Sino-Japanese. This
imposes a vast unnecessary burden on them, but even teachers and scholars of Chinese sometimes have
trouble accepting that the ancient language is not the modern one and that the ancient language is part of the
civilization of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan as much as of modern China. It is as though students of Latin were
told they would have to learn Italian as well.
Once when Confucius was passing near the foot of Mount Tai in a chariot, there was a married woman
weeping at a grave mound, and dolorously too. Confucius politely rested his hands on the front rail of the
chariot and listened to her weeping. He sent Zilu (Tzu-lu) to inquire of her, saying; "From the sound of your
weeping, it seems that you indeed have many troubles."
Classical Chinese:
Mandarin Translation:
Then the woman said; "It is true. My father-in-law died in a tiger's jaw; my husband also died there. Now, my
son has also died there." Confucius said, "Why do you not leave this place?" The woman said: "Here there is
no harsh and oppressive government."
Classical Chinese:
Classical Chinese:

Confucius said, "Young men, take
note of this: a harsh and oppressive
government is more ferocious and
fearsome than even a tiger."
Dialects of Chinese
Classical Languages
Home Page
Copyright (c) 2000, 2008 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved

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10/10/2014 Yin & Yang and the I Ching

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