¦¼ 'you'

["Dylan W.H. Sung" <mabr12@dial.pipex.com>]

Dear Readers

The word for ditch or drain in cantonese is 'kui' ´ë . It's other meaning
is 'he, she, it' which is still used in H. 'gi2'. Its pronunciation for
drain is 'ki2'. Notice that it has changed sound but retained the same
tone. I don't think Cantonese used this pronoun at all. It uses the pronoun
Ê\ having the same sound but of a different tone. As a matter of interest,
the kui for ditch has been used with radical 9 (person) on its left. 

	Char	M.	C.	H.	E.
	¦× 	rou	yuk	ngiuk5	meat
	¤é 	ri	yat	ngit5	day, sun
	¤J 	ru	yap	ngip5	enter
	¤k 	nu	nui	ngi3	woman
	
Assuming that M. r- is now H. ng- that has become C. y-, and that the M. n
retains some of the ancient traces, as does C. n-; and the assumption that
ancient creation of words had a phonetic aspect, if modern Hakka retains
the sound of ngi3 as found in woman, then ¦¼ I think is the Hakka 'ngi2'
meaning 'you' as used in archaic times. M. ru, C. yu (like rain). This,
like gi2, is a remenant of ancient chinese still extant in Modern Hakka,
albeit with a tone change.

Would anyone say this was a reasonable assessment?

Dylan