Peking/Nanking Romanisation

[Zbigniew]

I believe the k (in place of today's standard j) in these place names (and maybe others, e.g. Chungking) was first proposed by French missionary translators in the 17th century. Does anyone know whether this k represented an actual historic pronunciation (as k or something close to it) among native speakers (possibly of the Nanjing dialect) or whether the k is simply a crudely approximate transcription representing a sound that was actually the j sound, or something very close to it, that we're familiar with today?

[Shelley]

I understand that it was incorrectly heard by early travellers and translators and J was replaced with K.

 

The other mistake made was the substituting of P for B hence Peking. This is because the chinese B is more explosive and is closer to a French or English P.

[889]

No I haven't researched this, but I seem to recall "king" as the pronunciation because Canton was the major site of foreign contact with China, and that's essentially the pronunciation used there, where "Beijing" sounds something like "Bah-King," though with that B, as well as the K, much sharper than in English.

[lips]

In today's Cantonese, 北京 is pronounced bug1 ging1, with a hard g at the beginning of ging and both g's at the end silent.

[Flickserve]

Nanking is very close to Cantonese.

[davoosh]

It was a historic pronunciation, not a mishearing. The change of ki and gi (also spelt k'i and ki) into current Mandarin qi and ji is quite recent - presumably only happened in the last 100 years. Some dialects (notably Shandong) still retain this pronunciation.

[Zbigniew]

Thanks to everyone for the interesting range of answers!

If anyone can provide a link to a video of Cantonese or Shandong dialect speakers saying 北京 or 南京 I'd be fascinated to see it.

davoosh, it seems you're saying the velar pronunciation (k, et al.) was quite a widespread phenomenon among Mandarin speakers, and relatively recently. Are you saying that a hundred years ago all dialects of Mandarin had the velar pronunciation, and that only Shandong speakers (and a few others) have retained it? Do you have a reference source you can point us to for more information?

[Michaelyus]

For the Cantonese pronunciation of 北京: CantoDict has Jyutping romanisation, You can search up audio files for individual characters here at the CUHK website. Virtually any political commentary based in Hong Kong on YouTube will mention "Bak1-ging1" quite a lot.

 

The Taiwanese Hokkien pronunciation can be looked up on the Ho-lo Dict. That also gives a velar pronunciation for 京.

 

 

 

However, Peking, Nanking and Chungking are most definitely not from a historical form of Cantonese. The -e- in 北, the -n in 南 and the k- in 慶/庆 do not fit the pattern for Cantonese. These are a form of 17th/18th-century Mandarin "koine" or 官话.

 

About the dialects of Shandong not undergoing palatalisation: it's something that I've heard before too (specifically eastern Shandong). But I've not been able to confirm whereabouts... I'm sure both Jinan and Qingdao have palatalised velars into (alveolo-)palatals before high front vowels. Would like to see where exactly they do this archaicism!

 

Contemporary records from the 17th and 18th century unambiguously show that many Chinese words that have a palatal in modern standard Mandarin were pronounced with velars back then. E.g. Francisco Varo's 1703 Arte de la lengua Mandarina states under its pronunciation of ng:

 

Las voçes que acaban en ng se pronunçian mejor, poniendo s en lugar de g vg. [...] kiāns rìo

 

The word for river 江 is clearly represented with a k-, which would correspond to modern IPA /k/ too.

 

 

 

(This was despite his working in Canton [Guangzhou] most of his career; he had insisted on how well natives of Nanjing spoke the "Mandarin" language).

[archimon]

Why is that you assume we can all read French?

[Geiko]

Archimon, that quote is not in French, but in old Spanish. It says: "the words that end in -ng are better pronounced adding an -s instead of a -g, eg: tsâns 'to hide', fâns 'house', (...) kians 'river'"

[archimon]

Well, all the more in the case of an archaic Spanish - anyway, thanks for the translation.

[Zbigniew]

Thanks for the links and further information, Michaelyus!

If you or anyone knows of a modern publication (in any language) that deals with the history of sound changes in Mandarin at least, I'd be interested to hear of it. Reconstruction of earlier pronunciations is no doubt relatively limited as a consequence of the poor diagnostic clues offered by the Chinese writing system.

[Michaelyus]

Despite the comparative lack of phonetic structure compared to e.g. Latin and Attic Greek, there's still quite a bit that can still be gleaned from many different sources. I wrote an answer on StackExchange linking to one of the classic tomes, Baxter's A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology, Nonetheless, it is Middle Chinese that has of course much better phonological documentation, and Pulleyblank's Middle Chinese: A Study in Historical Phonology is a great introduction.

 

I can only confess to really liking WIkipedia's article on historical Chinese phonology and Middle Chinese - they're pretty useful as a summary, and are accurate enough for most beginners! 

[OneEye]

There's also Baxter's updated reconstruction with Laurent Sagart, Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction. It's really excellent.

[Zbigniew]

Many thanks, Michaelyus and OneEye, for the book references! I'll see if I can get hold of reasonably priced secondhand copies, or, failing that, I'll try the library.

[davoosh]

I can't remember the reference, but I know it's well supported and documented so you should be able to find something.

For an example of Shandong dialect not undergoing palatalisation, YouTube 倪萍山东话 天气预报, and you can hear her clearly say things such as 七到八級 /ki dao ba gi/, etc. Maybe younger generations have now acquired palatalisation.

[Michaelyus]

Thanks for the heads-up - that's a great video! I think 七 with [k^(h)] would be really weird... I hear a palatalisation of [t^j] myself in that YouTube video. But she does use [k^h] in 群 though, which makes sense. However, the majority of velars from Middle Chinese have been palatalised, e.g. 家, 及, 今. She's from somewhere in rural Rongcheng 荣成 in Weihai, tallying with eastern Shandong. I wonder if there have been any isoglosses drawn for this?

[davoosh]

Yeah, I was listening on my phone with bad sound quality. /ki/ for 七would be weird. I think she says 教 /giao/ and 及 in 來不及 sounds closer to /gi/ (or probably [ɟi] more accurately). Also heard 去 as /ki/ (or similar).