Talk:Sino-Xenic vocabularies

Miyake

Header added. —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 02:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, the term "sinoxenic" was coined by the linguist Marc Miyake in his treatment of Kitan words in Chinese transcription (this was later mentioned by Alexander Vovin in his Acta Orientalia article on Kitan words in the Chinese chronicle Qidan Guozhi). Unless I am mistaken on this, Dr. Miyake should be given credit for this coinage. --149.159.2.216 03:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note!

Miyake credits the term to Martin (1953), which I have accordingly included and referenced.

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 02:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

North Korea

Header added. —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 02:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Should make clear that North Korea (like Vietnam) has completely dispensed with Chinese characters in non-historic contexts, while they're somewhat vestigial in South Korea. AnonMoos (talk) 23:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Scope?

Header added. —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 02:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

What on earth is meant by 'Sinoxenic' languages. Languages that have lots of Chinese loans in them, in which case why is Tai not listed? How many loans does a language need to be called sinoxenic? Doe is perhaps just mean 'language with a funny/difficult script' in which case it is hardly a valuable intellectual category. I suggest that this article and the related category be removed entirely. Tibetologist (talk) 10:05, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

The scope of this article is somewhat unclear, even assuming the definition given is correct, the content is still very inaccurate. several instances spring to mind, Zhuang still use such a script (I have just corrected this), and many other ethnic groups who use such scripts are not mentioned. Also various scripts such as Tangut only have a superficial similarity to Chinese.

Johnkn63 (talk) 13:04, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

The article was incorrect – it used “Sinoxenic languages” to mean “Chinese-script-using languages” (to answer your question, Tibetologist).

However, this is not what “Sinoxenic” means – it means “Foreign readings of Chinese characters”.

The term “Sinoxenic language” or “Sinoxenic languages” is occasionally used in the loose sense of “Chinese-script-using languages”, but this is very rare.

I had previously come upon the article, found it a useful term, and hence expanded the article, but as you point out, this is not a standard term. I’ve thus fixed the article so that it is correct and accords with linguistics usage – hope y’all find it better now!

(The associated category should be deleted – I’ve marked it “speedy delete – self”.)

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 02:39, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I've got to agree with Tibetologist and John that this article is still very vague as to what Sino-Xenic actually covers. Does it cover languages (such as Tibetan for example) that have occasional borrowings from Chinese but do not have any script-relationship with Chinese, or is it restricted to languages that borrow characters as well as spoken words. Big Khitan would fall into that category, but would Tangut, as its characters are not directly borrowed from Chinese, but just share a structural similarity? And what about Yi (I noticed that Nbarth added it to the thankfully now defunct Sinoxenic category) ? -- Traditional Yi script variants do mostly have characters for the digits 1-10 that are obviously derived from the corresponding Chinese characters, but they are not linguistic borrowings from Chinese, and modern standardised Yi does not have any obvious borrowings from Chinese characters at all. If Yi is Sino-Xenic, then English should also be Sino-Xenic I suppose, because we have words such as "tea" and "silk".BabelStone (talk) 21:14, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi BabelStone – thanks for the cleanup!

Good point on clarification – Miyake, p. 99 specifies that it is only the large-scale borrowings of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese that are considered; I’ve added language to that effect.

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 00:24, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Incomplete examples

The following example entries are incomplete. I can't actually decide over which of these are good examples that are valid for inclusion, after all it isn't good to have too many examples. In case someone wants to complete the table, include what they believe to be good examples (i.e. specifically meaningful to include) and leave out the poor examples, the WIP table is here:

Sinoxenic table (incomplete WIP draft)
English	漢	和	韓	越	琉	壯
Birthday	生日 shēngrì	誕生日 tanjōbi	生日(생일) saeng-il	sinh nhật (生日)	–	–
Infrared beam	紅外線 hóngwàixiàn	赤外線 sekigaisen	赤外線(적외선) jeog-oeseon	(native used)	–	–
Weather forecast	天氣預報 tiānqì yùbào	天気予報 tenki yohō	日氣豫報(일기예보) ilgi yebo	dự báo thời tiết (預報時節)	–	–
Aeroplane	飛機 fēijī	飛行機 hikōki	飛行機(비행기) bihaenggi	phi cơ (飛機)	–	–
Blessing	祝福 zhùfú	祝福 shukufuku	祝福(축복) chukbok	chúc phúc (祝福)	–	–
Earthquake	地震 dìzhèn	地震 jishin	地震(지진) jijin	địa chấn (地震)	–	–
Library	圖書館 túshūguǎn	図書館 toshokan	圖書館(도서관) doseogwan	thư viện (書院)	–	–
Bicycle	自行車 zìxíngchē 腳踏車 jiǎotàchē	自転車 jitensha	自轉車(자전거) jajeongeo	xe đạp (車踏)	–	–
Nurse	護士 hùshì 護理師 hùlǐshī	看護師 kangoshi	看護師(간호사) ganhosa	y tá (醫佐)	–	–
Ambulance	救護車 jiùhùchē 急救車 jíjiùchē	救急車 kyūkyūsha	救急車(구급차) gugeubcha 應急車(응급차) eunggeubcha	xe cứu thương (車救傷) xe cấp cứu (車急救)	–	–
Grape	葡萄 pútáo	葡萄 budō	葡萄(포도) podo	(native used)	–	–

I think the article currently has enough examples already, although adding one or two more wouldn't be pushing it that far. Any more than that, however, is a bit much. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 14:34, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Ryukyuan forest

Is the Ryukyuan word for forest really the same as mountain in Japanese (山 yama)? Dean Turbo (talk) 12:26, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but in this case, the characters are phonetic and not semantic (i.e. meaning). Just like how language is 口 mouth and nation is 島 island in Standard Japanese. In Japanese, 口 kuchi would refer to things relating to the mouth, but in Okinawan, 沖縄口 Uchinaaguchi means "Okinawan language"; 山 yama is also found in various Okinawan location names that relate to forests or woodland. The user who applied a few of these entries is User:ChavacanBen, who is quite familiar with Okinawan linguistics. I'd presume he has access to dictionaries and all kinds of relevant literature. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:40, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

OK. Thanks, benlisquare. -- Dean Turbo (talk) 11:20, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, Marc Miyake discusses the etymology of Okinawan mui 'mountain' (cognate with Japanese mori 森 'forest') here, and notes that Okinawan yama means 'forest' here. BabelStone (talk)

The ambiguity between mountain and forest can easily be explained by geography.

yama probably meant "wilderness", as the opposite of sato, the village and surrounding fields. Now, in Japan, 80% of the land is mountainous. If you leave the village, you're both in the mountains and in the forest. You'll hardly find an area that is either-or. Due to the climate, most mountains are covered in forest to high altitudes. And the few plains are either swamps or cleared for agriculture. Now, Okinawa does not have as high mountains as the mainland, so the word means "forest" only.

mori probably went the other way. As your source says, the origin is probably 盛る moru "to pile up". From there came the meaning "hill". In Okinawa, this became "hill" -> "mountain", and on the mainland "hill" -> "forest", for the same reasons as above.

When would this shift have happened? If your source is correct, and mori / mu'i can be traced back to Paekche, then it probably came to Japan with the Yayoi people, 300 BC - 300 CE. Who knows whether yama came with the same group, or whether it's a Jomon word? We'll probably never know until the invention of a working time machine. --Mkill (talk) 18:02, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Why modern examples?

Why doesn't the example list use vocabulary from classical Chinese texts that actually show the historic cultural transition from China over Korea to Japan?

Most of the examples given in the article are modern words, many of them Western concepts and inventions. They came to China, Korea and Japan through translated works and other sources, from the outside. Ethnicity, populace, republic, freedom and equality are concepts from Western philosophy and political thought. Telephone, newspaper and film are technical inventions. Many of these words only entered the vocabulary after East Asian countries ended their isolation to the outside world in the 19th century. To further complicate matters, some modern Chinese words like 经济 (economy) were coined in Meiji Japan by Japanese authors or translators, then imported to China.

Now, the process how modern 19th and 20th century words were coined and then spread among the East Asian sprachbund is very interesting, but it gives a bit of a distorted picture of Chinese loanwords. It's like trying to show Latin loanwords in modern European languages by using examples like "computer" or "prime minister". --Mkill (talk) 18:46, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Issues with the native examples

In addition, some problems with the "native examples":

• Nation = 國家 guójiā = 国 kuni. 国家 kokka exists in Japanese, and is more close to "nation" than 国 kuni "country". It would be the better entry in this case.
• One = 一 yī = ひと(つ) hito(tsu). Should be either 一 yī = 一 ichi for "one" when counting, or 一个 = ひと(つ) hito(tsu) for "one" as in "one (generic counter word)"
• to write (past tense) = 寫 xiě. Just 写 xiě does not imply past tense. The closest Chinese equivalent would be 写了. Makes little sense as example because of the very different grammar between Chinese and the others.
• mother (informal speech) - お母さん okāsan. That stretches the definition of informal speech. Yes, children do use お母さん to address their parents, but in rather "formal" situations.
• personal pronoun (generic) - 私 watashi. Japanese does not have a "generic" personal pronoun. 私 watashi is more generic than others, but it's not universal and it has clear connotations.
• Soup = 湯 tāng = 汁 shiru. Misleading, because chin. 汁 zhī = "juice" and jap. 汁 shiru = "1. juice 2. soup" while jap. 湯 yu = "1. hot water 2. hot bath". "hot water" is the historic meaning of the character 湯. As in a number of other cases, Japanese kanji preserved a historic meaning while Mandarin Chinese shifted. In other words, 湯 did mean hot water when the character came to Japan. The meaning of "soup" later superseded "hot water" in China.

The general problem with the examples is that easy English words like "one", "I" or "mother" don't necessarily have easy translations in other languages. Pretty much all of the examples could be used to illustrate interesting differences, historic meaning shifts and corner cases, but they don't make good general examples. --Mkill (talk) 18:46, 5 December 2011 (UTC)