Re: Anser (was: swallow vs. nighingale)

From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 50635
Date: 2007-11-29

WARNING: This post contains a few Chinese characters encoded in UTF-8.
The Unicode code is given afterwards, so the character may be
recovered using that if all else fails.

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

> A.F to Richard
>
> Do you have the form of bin4 "knee-cap" and bi4 "thigh" ?
>
> in any of Shanghai, WenZhou, HaiKou, XiaMen, JianOu, FuZhou ?

I'm no Sinologist - I can't even use a Chinese dictionary!

However, the Hakka forms I got looking up 髀 (U+9AC0) at
http://www.chinalanguage.com/dictionaries/hakka/ are interesting.
They are based on 'bi3', where <b> must represent /p/. Which tone the
'3' represents, I do not know - one must calibrate the system, and
possibly make allowance for the tone indications including an element
of reconstruction - most Hakka dialects seem not to split the shang
tone. However, Hakka is reported to have one interesting feature -
Middle Chinese voiced consonants become voiceless *aspirated* stops.
This argues that Middle Chinese had /p/.

> Modern (Beijing) reading: bì
>
> Starostin comments :
>
> Also read *bÄ"Ê", MC bíej, Mand. bì id. Standard Sino-Viet. readings
are tỳ (for MC pjé, with an irregular tone) and be^̃ (for MC bíej).
Viet. ve^́ may in fact reflect VM *C-pelÊ" (PAA *pVr 'thigh') in which
case it has nothing to do with Chinese.
>
> A.F : Two roots are interfering in BJ bi31 and GD bei53 ?

์Not impossible - there is also 䯗 (U+4BD7) 'buttocks, hipbone;
innominate bone', Mandarin bi4, Cantonese bei1, bei2 & bei3, so bei53,
bei35 or bei33.

> GD should be bei33 ?

Not impossible - that would have been written 'bei3'. Incidentally, I
had to puzzle long to realise that BJ=Beijing and GD=Guangdong.

Richard.