Japanese loan words in Chinese

[holyman]

i think what ala is trying to say is that the distinctions make no diff to the chinese. just like the n- or l- in hanyu pinyin makes no diff to some southerners and xi'an people. they go on pronoucing nan'ren(man) as lan'ren, niu'nai(milk) as liu'lai or hen'nan(very difficult) as hen'lan. the distinctions are there, but they cant see it.

[bathrobe]

Yes. That is what I have been saying for the past 5 posts.

We seem to be largely in agreement on everything except your strange assertion that we can ignore certain information as irrelevant. The onus is on you to prove this, not simply repeat that 'Chinese speakers are oblivious of this, therefore we can forget it' or 'this is a Chinese-language forum, therefore we can exclude that information'.

If borrowing was a two-way street, as you agree, then all the commutations and permutations that occurred in the process are relevant, not merely the ones on the Chinese side. Treating the Japanese end of the process as a 'black box' is indefensible if you are trying to understand how each language interacted with the other -- which is the point I was making in the first place.

[ala]

If borrowing was a two-way street' date=' as you agree, then [i']all[/i] the commutations and permutations that occurred in the process are relevant, not merely the ones on the Chinese side. Treating the Japanese end of the process as a 'black box' is indefensible if you are trying to understand how each language interacted with the other -- which is the point I was making in the first place.

Ok. But I just don't think in the course of the transfer, the Japanese distinctions were ever considered by the Chinese scholars because they were not capable to adapt them given the constraint of the Chinese language. Hence it wasn't a natural "merging" of distinction that occurred on the Chinese side (as in the n/l example by holyman), but rather a deliberate flattening out due to medium constraints and incompatibilities at the start of the transfer. Thus, whatever distinction that existed in Japanese, is really a topic on the Japanese language, requiring some very detailed knowledge of the Japanese language and its writing system. Which is fine, except the pertinence to Chinese is not clear; since the Chinese language was not at any point in the transfer capable of making the distinction. If the discussion were focused on why Chinese wasn't capable of making the distinctions found in Japanese, I would agree that your information can be relevant.

Also as an example, I do not think this issue can be related to how Mandarin has lost its "entering tones" (rusheng), and that it should be made aware of this historic characteristic still found in many other Chinese dialects (which I agree to). The loss of rusheng was of natural evolution of various influences; the loss of the Japanese word-forming distinction in Chinese is one of immediate incompatibility without compromise (thus highly delineating the topics of Chinese and Japanese studies). Hence, if you want to bring Japan into your discussion (as in what was lost and how), then perhaps it is still pertinent; but if you are only talking about the usage of these Japanese loan words in Chinese, then quite frankly the need to annotate each with the Japanese distinction is pretty irrelevant in the sense that it is "beyond the imagination of the Chinese language." It's not how Chinese operates or operated; it's not compatible and serves no function (not even insightful to Chinese). The additional annotation would unlikely increase the imagination of the Chinese language. I can only see enlightenment from this annotation (and also see a potentially new direction for the Chinese language) if 30-40% of the Chinese vocabulary consisted of Japanese loan words of BOTH types. But this is not the case.

Holyman: Actually, I would argue that some of the Southern Chinese who do not differentiate n/l should still be made aware that the n/l distinction exists as historical education, and education that will enable greater insight into their mother tongue. As clearly n/l distinction is a matter of phonological variation, and certainly historically reconcillable. It is not a system incompatibility.

Anyway, I realize I may have sounded quite acerbic in some of my posts. Sorry for that.

[bathrobe]

I won't continue to argue this one as we appear to have a standoff.

I'd just like to casually ask how 'natural' formations like quxiao, qudi, shouxu, and yindu are felt to be in Chinese. Did they originally 'fit', or have they been accepted over time so that their strangeness is no longer felt? Or perhaps they contributed to a change in Chinese itself.

I'm reminded of a newspaper article I read a year or two ago that referred to the Japanese custom of 'huajian'. From the Chinese point of view this is quite strange because it puts the noun before the verb. In fact, this is the Chinese pronunciation of 'hanami' or flower viewing.

[Ian_Lee]

Just find out another interesting compound Japanese loan word that is widely used in the Chinese media:

援交