It’s really a small world, I found out about this professor because he did a translation of the Joyo kanji ethymology book from Shirakawa.
This is clearly a PR stunt for his book (which is probably great if you don’t want to battle through the Shirakawa in Japanese). The book is a bit expensive though (and the name does neither relate to Shirakawa or Japanese).
Could’ve been a dialect thing?
I’m only at an HSK1 level when it comes to Mandarin (like JLPT N6 level. heh), but there are a number of words I’ve seen that have slightly different pronunciations, but the original could’ve totally been kept the same in Japanese. It’s been a minute since I’ve studied though, so nothing is coming to mind just yet, but things like 水 (pinyin is shuǐ, pronounced like “shway”) could’ve at least been しゅい instead of すい
I’m sure there is a reason for it, but it is different from what I encountered when it comes to these sound changes. You have to keep in mind that the om’yomi are based on Middle Chinese, which is different from the current pronunciation. So for 水 you can find that the pronunciation is assumed to be ɕwi (sjyix/sjwyy), I would turn that into スイ as well [although I have no idea how to read that exactly …]
But for 漢 the reading was already han (it’s like a proper name, anyway). The sounds were also imported over Korea, so that is a good indicator as well, and it’s “hanja” in Korea.
Hmm but still something like sh-w-i I’m just interested in this but not an expert, but I think the Japanese invented the small modifiers like しゅ later, so in the beginning they modified it differently.
Ahhh, ok. That would make more sense then.
I know at some point they dropped vowel sounds to get down to 5, but I wasn’t aware that the small character modifiers came in later. I forget what those are called. Gotta look them up.
[edit] They’re called 拗音
I remember watching a video on the Okinawan language/dialect and they still seem to use more sounds than the Tokyo dialect.
They do! And they have their own words too, to the point that Okinawan dialect can be considered a full blown language on its own. There was an attempt to add new hiragana to cover those extra sounds, but I don’t think it became well spread.
(nb: my sources are stuff I’ve read/heard in Okinawa two years ago, so no one should take that at face value )
I know enough to know that the older people in the kingdom still think of themselves as a separate country. Haha. I think it’s something that like 80% of people 30 and under feel like they’re Japanese, while it’s only something like 20% for those who are around their 80’s or so. I forget where I read that though.
Just adding that while there is an Okinawa Language (or dialect from certain points of view–a language is a dialect with an army) which is spoken in southern Okinawa Island, there are about 10 distinct languages spoken in the Okinawa Ryukyu Islands, together known as the Ryukyuan languages or 琉球語派 Ryūkyū-goha.