Comments on: 霍: Huò or Hwak? Sharpening knives in the story of Mulan /blog/2006/04/%e9%9c%8d-huo-or-hwak-sharpening-knives-in-the-story-of-mulan/ But I fear more for Muninn... Thu, 16 May 2013 14:30:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2 By: HYS /blog/2006/04/%e9%9c%8d-huo-or-hwak-sharpening-knives-in-the-story-of-mulan/comment-page-1/#comment-11707 Tue, 25 Apr 2006 08:15:28 +0000 http://muninn.net/blog/2006/04/%e9%9c%8d-huo-or-hwak-sharpening-knives-in-the-story-of-mulan.html#comment-11707 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.

]]> By: Muninn /blog/2006/04/%e9%9c%8d-huo-or-hwak-sharpening-knives-in-the-story-of-mulan/comment-page-1/#comment-11690 Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:14:25 +0000 http://muninn.net/blog/2006/04/%e9%9c%8d-huo-or-hwak-sharpening-knives-in-the-story-of-mulan.html#comment-11690 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).

]]> By: amida /blog/2006/04/%e9%9c%8d-huo-or-hwak-sharpening-knives-in-the-story-of-mulan/comment-page-1/#comment-11686 Mon, 24 Apr 2006 11:55:18 +0000 http://muninn.net/blog/2006/04/%e9%9c%8d-huo-or-hwak-sharpening-knives-in-the-story-of-mulan.html#comment-11686 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.

]]> By: Jon /blog/2006/04/%e9%9c%8d-huo-or-hwak-sharpening-knives-in-the-story-of-mulan/comment-page-1/#comment-11674 Mon, 24 Apr 2006 02:09:43 +0000 http://muninn.net/blog/2006/04/%e9%9c%8d-huo-or-hwak-sharpening-knives-in-the-story-of-mulan.html#comment-11674 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.

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