Thanks for a very good clarification. On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Leonardo Boiko <[email protected]> wrote:
> 2014-11-17 9:08 GMT-02:00 Magnus Bodin ☀ <[email protected]>: > >> Just to clarify. The transcribed form "ji" in the japanese emoji word >> 絵文字 is probably not from mandarin, since 字 is pronounced "zi" in mandarin. >> Is it pronounced "ji" in an other chinese language? >> > > Japanese doesn't usually borrow from Mandarin. Rather, a large amount of > its vocabulary (about 60%) was borrowed from classical and medieval Chinese > (much like the way that 58% of English words were borrowed from Latin and > French). These words of Chinese origin are called *kango* in Japanese, > and *ji *is one of them – quite naturally, as the concept of “written > character” itself was acquired from China. > > There are three main layers of Chinese loans into Japanese: a stratum they > call *go-on*, which came from Late Old Chinese and Early Middle Chinese > (with a Korean flavor); the *kan-on* stratum *, *from the Chang'an > dialect of Late Middle Chinese; and a bit of Song/Yuan Late Middle Chinese > as *tōsō-on* [1]. > > The Japanese word *ji *“character” is from *go-on* Chinese, likely > developing from Old Chinese *tsəʔ/*dzəh [2] or *dzə [3]. 字 may also be > pronounced *shi*, which is from the *kan-on* layer. > > Notice that the Mandarin sound written as ‹z› (in 字 *zì *) doesn’t denote > the [z] consonant but rather [ts] (Mandarin has no voiced consonants like > [z] or [d]); and also that the Jap. ‹j› isn't English ‹j› but the same > phoneme as a voiced /ti/ → /di/ → [(d)ʑi]. But this similarity isn't > because Japanese borrowed from Mandarin; rather, they're cousins to the > same ancestor. > > [1] Miyake, *Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction*. > [2] Schuessler, *ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese*. > [3] Baxter-Sagart Old Chinese reconstruction. > > >
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