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J---->K shift in Mandarin?


Yihui

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Does anyone know about how or why a bunch of k sounds systematically changed to j in Mandarin?

It seems pretty obvious there was such a change from looking at historical names, like:

Peking->Beijing

Nanking->Nanjing

Heilungkiang->Heilongjiang

Kiangsi->Jiangxi

and so on

It seems even more obvious to me, as a Cantonese speaker, when most of these j sounds in Mandarin are pronounced with a g or k sound in my own dialect (ie Chiang Kaishek--> Jiang Jieshi) How did this change come about? Was it part of the standardization of Mandarin in the 20th century?

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East Asian languages (including Korean and Japanese) have progressively shifted from "hard" sounds to "soft" (Indo-European languages have undergone similar shifts). By that I mean from unaspirated plosives, to aspirated plosives, to affricates and fricatives, and finally to semivowels. p became p' which became pf and eventually became f or h; t became t' and some eventually became ts (pinyin z)and ts' (pinyin c); k became k' and some became h or gluttural [x]. Ever wondered why Philosophy is spelled with a "ph"? Because in ancient Greek it was actually at one point pronounced like pinyin p today.

A further step occurred in the northern dialects in the last 500 years or so, most syllables having an "i" medial had their consonants palatalized in Mandarin and Northern Wu dialects. k --> tc, (pinyin j); k' --> tc,' (pinyin q); h --> c, (pinyin x). So all the hard k's, g's, etc became "soft" when followed by an "i". This is much like the soft/hard "g" in French/Latin and to some extent in English, ginger vs. guest; or "ch" like children vs. cholera (children and the "kinder" in kindergarten are originally the same Germanic word).

Likewise, in Japanese you have tu --> tsu, du --> zu, p --> h/f, ts --> s. Palatalizations of si --> shi, zi --> ji, ti --> chi. But Japanese has retained ki, gi pronunciations. In Korean there was no shift to h and f; so Korean still today pronounces France and Fuji with a P.

Wu dialects shifted along with Mandarin, but with addition of voiced shifts b --> v; g --> ng --> nj --> j

Palatalizations of gi --> dZi; zi --> Zi; si,hi --> Si; tsi,ki --> tSi; ts'i,k'i --> tS'i, n --> nj.

So 新闻 is Shinven in Shanghainese today, instead of Sinben; Buddhism 佛 is Vut instead of But.

In some cases Wu dialects became "softer" than even Mandarin, such as 鬼 (Pinyin: gui3) is pronounced in Wu dialects like Pinyin "ju".

So a scale of the number of consonant shifts: Mandarin (most), Wu, Japanese, Cantonese, Korean (least).

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