The most fun lessons so far this semester in my first year classical chinese class were reading the classic tale of the giant snake killing Li Ji（李寄, and her faithful sidekick, a snake-killing dog) and the original ballad of the female warrior Mulan（木蘭） (two versions here and here). Both brave and filial young daughters from Fujian and somewhere along the Yellow river in northern China, respectively. One is out to save her town from the evil miasma of the demonic snake, while the other is trying to save old pappy from conscription.
In one line of the latter story (小弟聞姊來，磨刀霍霍向豬羊) there is a nice little description of the sharpening of knives. In our glossary, 霍 has the following interesting note attached:
“[Onomatopoetic for sharpening of knife]. In ancient Chinese, this word would have ended in a glottal stop, producing something closer to “hwak” – much more appropriate than the modern Mandarin pronunciation.”
I recall reading somewhere that this glottal stop is reflected in Japanese pronounciations of various Chinese words. I can’t recall any specific examples, but the wikipedia article for Kanji did have this to say:
Thus most on’yomi are composed of two moras (syllables or beats), the second of which is either a lengthening of the vowel in the first mora (this being i in the case of e and u in the case of o, due to linguistic drift in the centuries since), or one of the syllables ku, ki, tsu, chi, or syllabic n, chosen for their approximation to the final consonants of Middle Chinese.
I have nothing to back me up here, but I think the “ku” of “gaku” (“study”) reflects a glottal stop or final consonant in early Chinese pronunciation: In Taiwanese, it is pronounced something like “hak.” So that could be an example.
Jon and amida, thanks for the comments. I think you are both right. The Japanese pronunciation conneciton was often mentioned in my Japanese classes, often as part of an explanation in response to student’s puzzled looks when they are told that the “on-yomi” means the “Chinese pronunciation” (Sino-Japanese).
As you may know, such languages as Korean and Japanese preserve the glottal stop that was once present in ancient Chinese. Such dialects as Cantonese and Fukienese continue to preserve this glottal stop as well. In the recent movie, “Fearless”, Jet Li plays the martial arts master 霍元甲 Fok Yun-gap. Fok yun-gap is the Cantonese pronunciation of Huo Yuanjia in Mandarin. Notice the glottal stop in the first and last characters. Similarly, the same three characters are pronounced as 곽원갑 in their Korean eumhun (음훈; 音訓) reading, once again with the glottal stop present.