Polysyllabic on-yomi

[jmignot]

I remember reading somewhere that, in Chinese, kanji are pronounced as a single syllable.
Since on-yomi are supposedly the "Chinese" pronunciations of kanji, has anybody got an idea of where polysyllabic on-yomi, such as ミャク (for 脈) might come from ?
Is this just a phonetic change resulting from how the Japanese were able to pronounce Chinese sounds? According to the kanjidict Web site, this particular character was
"mo4", "mai4" in Mandarin (numbers denote tones, I guess…)
"maeg" in Korean,
so it might make sense (the Korean has already got a final consonant!)
Are there any known systematics of such effects?

Jean-Michel

[Bueller_007]

I remember reading somewhere that, in Chinese, kanji are pronounced as a single syllable.
Since on-yomi are supposedly the "Chinese" pronunciations of kanji, has anybody got an idea of where polysyllabic on-yomi, such as ミャク (for 脈) might come from ?
Is this just a phonetic change resulting from how the Japanese were able to pronounce Chinese sounds? According to the kanjidict Web site, this particular character was
"mo4", "mai4" in Mandarin (numbers denote tones, I guess…)
"maeg" in Korean,
so it might make sense (the Korean has already got a final consonant!)
Are there any known systematics of such effects?

Jean-Michel

I translated this Wikipedia page from Japanese to English a while back:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-on

It doesn't specifically make mention of the monosyllabic->polysyllabic shift in the original Japanese article, but it does mention that a number of sounds were imported from ancient Korea (Baekje), along with Buddhism.

So whether or not that applies in your case depends on whether or not the polysyllabic on'yomis are classified as "go-on" or not.

Also, a quick search of Wikipedia turned up this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entering_tone

That doesn't seem to apply in the case of 脈 though...

[jmignot]

Also, a quick search of Wikipedia turned up this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entering_tone

Thanks Bueller-san. I had never heard about that "entering tone" in Middle Chinese, which seems to give the clue to the whole phonetic process. Very interesting indeed. Wikipedia is invaluable…

[Bueller_007]

Also, a quick search of Wikipedia turned up this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entering_tone

Thanks Bueller-san. I had never heard about that "entering tone" in Middle Chinese, which seems to give the clue to the whole phonetic process. Very interesting indeed. Wikipedia is invaluable…

Definitely.

[quizzieness]

Hi i've been listening to japanesepod101 podcasts for a verrry long time now but this is my first post XD
Anyway, I have noticed during my kanji studies that the onyomi is VERY similar to cantonese (which is my native language). 脈 is pronounced somewhat like "muck" in cantonese and this type of similarity has helped me so much when learning (I usually only focus on learning the kunyomi of a kanji!). Even before I learned a kanji, I could often guess the readings of some 熟語 and of course, know the meaning as well =D.

[Bueller_007]

Hi i've been listening to japanesepod101 podcasts for a verrry long time now but this is my first post XD
Anyway, I have noticed during my kanji studies that the onyomi is VERY similar to cantonese (which is my native language). 脈 is pronounced somewhat like "muck" in cantonese and this type of similarity has helped me so much when learning (I usually only focus on learning the kunyomi of a kanji!). Even before I learned a kanji, I could often guess the readings of some 熟語 and of course, know the meaning as well =D.

Thanks for that.

I actually noticed there was some similarity between Cantonese and Japanese when I studied it for a bit before I went to Hong Kong, but of course, I never got as far as learning the readings for kanji like 脈 .

Kanji readings got adopted from all over the shop, so it's not surprising that some of them came from Cantonese. Looks like you've solved the 脈 issue.