Language changes

[Lau Chunfat <96981339r@polyu.edu.hk>]

Dear Hakka firends,

Just a short reply.

I like Clem's comments, "the world is dynamic and changing", but I want to
answer to the "misconception".

>Dr. Liu(Lau) stated that English was not English 1500 years ago and I
quote him "At that time, English also did not exist." But just because
the label "English" was put on a language at a certain date doesn't mean
that the language did not exist before the label and that the language
only suddenly appeared after the label was put on it, as Dr, Liu(Lau)
seemed to indicate that it did. That is definitley a big misconception.

I did not mean that.  "English also did not exist." means no one at that
tme had the concept of "English", although Pre-English may have been
spoken. A lanugage cannot fall from the sky.


And to Yanshi:
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The rime should have been [i] throughout the poem. Language changes
occurred in the past millennium included apicalization of Mandarin and
Meixian, breaking of Cantonese and some Mandarin [i] and deretroflection of
the Southern dialects, leading to the following results:
Mandarin rimes are [1], [0] in ci, zhi etc. (apical vowels which is not
available in ASCII, the rimes of ci and shi), [i] in most cases
(retention), [ei] in fei (fly), bei (sorrow), {uei] in gui (return).
Meixian rimes are [1] , [i] and [ui], more regular than Mandarin.
Dongguan/Bao'an Hakka rimes are [u], [i] and [ui], a bit different from
Meixian but also no perfect match.
Cantonese rimes are [i], [ei] and [uai], also better than Mandarin.
Both Hakka and Cantonese look better than mandarin because of less changes
involved, but they are far from perfect.
Although our tongues are preserving the rimes better, we are losing the
authentiy of the initials. Middle Chinese *K are lost in both Hakka and
Cantonese, such as hen3/hang2 (mandarin ken3 meaning promise), fu4/fu3
(Mandarin ku, trousers), vud5/vad5 (Mandarin qu1, bend). Therefore, don't
view our tongues as unbeatable, and that is the point why all dialects
should be preserved in order to understand our past.

Mandarin and most sorthern dialects have lost the entering tones, which are
preserved in most southern dialects. However, some "Hakka dialects" also
lost the entering tones, e.g. Changting in western Fujian and most "Hakka
dialects" in southern Jiangxi. Therefore, it is not only the Northerners
who acquired this laziness.

Historical Linguistics of Chinese is very interesting and it helps to
reconstruct our common past. If we cannot understand the past correctly,
there is no hope for the future.




Liu Zinfad (Liu Zhenfa/ Lau Chunfat).