Whose Middle Chinese reconstruction is this?

[Hofmann]

It doesn't sound like any reconstruction I've ever heard. It's obvious just by hearing the initials. Nobody reconstructs the 明 initial (as in 眠) as anything but /m/. And did I hear a /f/ at 不? Smells like BS.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Dear Hofmann,

I don't know anything about Middle Chinese reconstruction. I still can't get around how they could have only one pronunciation when they surely had many different dialects all over the empire, even in those days, and over such a long period of time.

But you know they had several pronunciation for the character 不.

Do a search for the character at the Guoyu Cidian web site put out by the Republic of China (Taiwan)'s Ministry of Education.

http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/

Use their bushou (radical) search or input ^不$ and you'll get four entries for 不.

Of those 4 entries, 3 of them have an initial f - sound.

I don't know if some of them are still used. One complaint about the Guoyu Cidian is that they don't differentiate between antiquated definitions from newer modern ones.

But it shouldn't matter much here since we're discussing Tang Dynasty poems as read in the Changan speech of the day.

Here's a snippet from Edwin G. Pulleyblank's "Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar".

http://i56.tinypic.com/2s15hmu.jpg

As for the m/b sound. A lot of southern dialects, such as Minnan, have b- initial for Mandarin m- initial.

http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org

They call their dialect "ban lam gu" instead of "min nan yu".

So, I guess it's possible that m- could be b-.

Or perhaps the reconstruction was done by a Minnanese speaker and he thought the speech should have been closer to his dialect.

Like all those Cantonese who think that their dialect was the speech of the Tang Dynasty because some Tang poems rhyme better in their dialect than in Mandarin. Overlooking the fact that they probably rhyme equally as well in Hakka, Minnan and a whole host of other dialects.

Or it could be that the guys behind the videos are Japanese and 不 in modern Japanese has at least 2 readings, bu and fu. And in my little Japanese dictionary the few word entries under 不 are all pronounced fu.

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

P.S. And shouldn't this thread be under "Classical Chinese" rather than "Non-Mandarin Chinese"? We are talking about Tang era poems and if that's not Classical Chinese then what is? Okay, technically it's literary Chinese but why quibble.

[Hofmann]

Classical Chinese is a written language while Middle Chinese is (usually) not. Furthermore, I'm focussing on the phonology here. I'm thinking people who frequent the Classical forum mainly discuss grammar, vocabulary, and maybe Old Chinese phonology.

There is consensus among all major reconstructions regarding a few things. One is that Middle Chinese had no labiodental consonants, which makes that /f/ really stand out. What became Mandarin /f/ was usually /p/ in Middle Chinese. All three readings of 不 in Middle Chinese start with a 幫 initial (which almost everyone agrees is /p/). Maybe it could have been /f/ and the 明 initial could have been something other than /m/ somewhere, but definitely not in 長安.

Also note that Old Chinese split in to Middle Chinese and Min Chinese. Min is not a descendant of Middle Chinese.