What word was pronounced "Taimai" in the 1300's?

[aesthete8]

Did you know that in the 1300's, "daimyo" was pronounced "taimai"?

[ueshiba]

On 12月16日, 午後2:32, aesthete8 <art...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Did you know that in the 1300's, "daimyo" was pronounced "taimai"?

No.
You want to say "tai-MEI" ?
Kouji Ueshiba

[Arekusu]

Le 16/12/2011 06:32, aesthete8 a écrit :
> Did you know that in the 1300's, "daimyo" was pronounced "taimai"?

Koujien :

たい‐めい【大名】

〓貴人。だいみょう。〈日葡〉

For the reference 日葡, Edict gives:
日葡辞書 【にっぽじしょ】 (n) Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam
(Japanese-Portuguese dictionary, published 1603-1604)


Arekusu

[aesthete8]

On Dec 15, 7:32 pm, aesthete8 <art...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Did you know that in the 1300's, "daimyo" was pronounced "taimai"?

According to this book, DAIMYO was pronounced TAIMAI in the 1300's:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7-QLjSl6j50C&pg=PA123&dq=taimai+daimyo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KCrwToSkDcKqiAKkioCeDg&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=taimai%20daimyo&f=false

[Arekusu]

As the author is an History of Japan's teacher in Inalco Paris
(Langues'O), I think he's right.

Arekusu

[Bart Mathias]

Maybe, but a scholar would back up such an odd-seeming statement with a
footnote citing (a source for) evidence. One wonders what kind of evidence
there could be. Even in Japan no one is old enough to remember how things were
pronounced over two centuries ago.
--
Bart Mathias <mat...@hawaii.edu>

[aesthete8]

On Dec 20, 3:47 pm, Bart Mathias <math...@hawaii.edu> wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:46:52 +0100
>

> Arekusu <alhexte...@pasdespamfree.fr> wrote:
> > Le 20/12/2011 07:26, aesthete8 a écrit :
> > > On Dec 15, 7:32 pm, aesthete8<art...@gmail.com>  wrote:
> > >> Did you know that in the 1300's, "daimyo" was pronounced "taimai"?
>
> > > According to this book, DAIMYO was pronounced TAIMAI in the 1300's:
>

> > >http://books.google.com/books?id=7-QLjSl6j50C&pg=PA123&dq=taimai+daim...

>
> > As the author is an History of Japan's teacher in Inalco Paris
> > (Langues'O), I think he's right.
>
> Maybe, but a scholar would back up such an odd-seeming statement with a
> footnote citing (a source for) evidence. One wonders what kind of evidence
> there could be. Even in Japan no one is old enough to remember how things were
> pronounced over two centuries ago.
> --

> Bart Mathias <math...@hawaii.edu>

But that's what I've always wondered--how does anyone know how a word
or music sounded in the historical past?

[Tad Perry]

"aesthete8" <art...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:24c5dea4-9b8f-4514...@p16g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...

***

We don't ever really know.
It would take the use of a highly defined phonetic language (like what
Tolkien invented for his Elves) where the glyph is tied to the phonetic
values in clear one-to-one relationships set down for that period of time OR
an audio recording. Neither of these is ever the case with records from our
past.

tvp

[Jean-Marc Desperrier]

Arekusu a écrit :

He's in Geneve now actually. Bad editing exists, especially when a book
about Japan is translated by a french translator who doesn't really
seems to have specific knowledge of the country. I'm not convinced the
french version "Le monde à l'envers: La dynamique de la société
médiévale" also contains that, or that it's written several times in the
book.

[Jim Beard]

Rhymes, how the same word is pronounced in several different dialects in
modern times, and contexts that provide clues to the pronunciation of
word (perhaps explicitly discussing pronunciation), are used to infer old
pronunciation in all languages. These are guesstimates, perhaps
approximate to the original pronunciation, but that can never be proven.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

[Bart Mathias]

On Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:16:55 -0800 (PST)
aesthete8 <art...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Dec 20, 3:47 pm, Bart Mathias <math...@hawaii.edu> wrote:

> > [...]. Even in Japan no one is old enough to remember how things were

> > pronounced over two centuries ago.
>

> But that's what I've always wondered--how does anyone know how a word
> or music sounded in the historical past?

Largely, what Jim Beard said. We also have evidence through similar guessing
about how other languages sounded way back when. If, e.g., the Chinese
characters used to write a certain Japanese word (by Chinese and Japanese
who learned Chinese) were probably pronounced like so in Chinese, then the
Japanese must have been pronounced more like that than some other way.

There is also some evidence in how Japanese kanafied Korean, and how Koreans
hanguled Japanese. That depends again on how Korean was *probably* pronounced,
but the inter- and intra-language guesses combine to yield fairly narrow
approximations.

It belatedly occurred to me that in a way some Japanese *do* remember how
things were pronounced longer ago than two centuries. People who learn youkyoku
attempt to maintain the exact pronunciation of their mentors. I don't know how
much we can learn from that, but I do recall that such youkyoku provides
evidence that the word for "mother" was once pronounced as should be expected:
'hawa.'
--
Bart Mathias <mat...@hawaii.edu>

[aesthete8]

> Bart Mathias <math...@hawaii.edu>

Concerning youkyoku, someone who sings nagauta told me that when the
word SHAMISEN appears in the text, it is sung SAMISEN.

With regard to gagaku, could the songs in that repertoire give some
idea of how Japanese was once pronounced? Or could it even give an
idea of how Chinese was once pronounced since I understand that much
of the repertoire came from Tang dynasty China?

[Bart Mathias]

On Sat, 24 Dec 2011 20:58:37 -0800 (PST)
aesthete8 <art...@gmail.com> wrote:

> [...]

> Concerning youkyoku, someone who sings nagauta told me that when the
> word SHAMISEN appears in the text, it is sung SAMISEN.

I don't know why the "sa" got changed to "sha." The Chinese that the "sham"
part came from must have been simply "sam," as it still is in Sino-Korean and
almost in Mandarin.

> With regard to gagaku, could the songs in that repertoire give some
> idea of how Japanese was once pronounced? Or could it even give an
> idea of how Chinese was once pronounced since I understand that much
> of the repertoire came from Tang dynasty China?

I do wish you would only ask questions I know the answers to.
--
Bart Mathias <mat...@hawaii.edu>

[Wasabi]

aesthete8 <art...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But that's what I've always wondered--how does anyone know how a word
> or music sounded in the historical past?

Often from transliteration into other languages, either through explicit
glossaries or implicitly from loanwords. Since pronunciations will probably
change at different times in different languages, back and forth
transliteration can let you zigzag back through the centuries and figure
out the original pronunciation was likely to be.

I recall being surprised to discover that the letter we call pi is called
'pee' by the modern Greeks, it turns out the ancient Greek pronunciation of
that letter has survived in English long after it disappeared in Greece.

[Bart Mathias]

I keep forgetting to try to answer this question for myself, but may I ask how
you discovered that? I would have guessed, based in part on the spelling, that
it would always have been "pee" outside of English. Why would they say [paj]?
--
Bart Mathias <mat...@hawaii.edu>

[Don Kirkman]

Further to Bart's message, I'm pretty willing to bet that the English
"pie" pronunciation doesn't match the ancient Greek pronunciation. I
just have a sneaky hunch that it's always been "peh" or something very
near it.
--
Don Kirkman
don...@charter.net

[aesthete8]

That reminds me of claims that Elizabethan English is preserved in
Appalachia:

http://streaming.ohio.edu/cas/lingCALL/ling270/myth9.pdf

[Tad Perry]

"aesthete8" <art...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:bfac40e8-d65e-4b25...@1g2000yqv.googlegroups.com...

***

My first point about this is that sometimes the truth gets debunked as a
myth.

My second point about this is that claiming North Carolinians speak Queen
Elizabeth I's English is an overstatement, and therefore can be easily
attacked as a claim, even though a lesser claim that many old things survive
might hold water.

Consider this: In Japan, the Okinawa dialect is said to be more like the
Japanese spoken in the Heian Period than any of the other dialects. The
reasoning being that, existing at the outside edge of influence from the
Japanese power center, other influences have been slower to reach there and
change things. This is generally accepted and not considered "a myth" at
all.

This is somewhat analogous to "the Appalachians speak Shakespeare's English"
claim. After all, the Appalachia's were the remotest part of the world
speaking English at that time and would be the last place for subsequent
changes to reach. The lesser claim that a lot of Elizibethan English still
survives in Appalachia is probably true.

Going back to my first point: any proposition can be argued with. Every
position one might take has a potential argument that can be moutned against
it. The fact you *can* mount an argument does not mean the argument has been
won. For instance, I believe I could write a very good rebuttal to the essay
you cite. (This post perhaps being a sort of preview of what I'd say, plus
examples.)

As a side note: have you ever been to snopes.com? All of the information
gathered there was originally collected by the members of the
alt.folklore.urban newsgroup (of which I was a member) during the early
1990's. The free information was basically "borrowed" by two of the members
and made into a more commercial website. I believe these members were of
questionable scruples in that they did not do all the work to collect it,
but now try to claim a sort of ownership.

Anyway, the goal of alt.folklore.urban was to look at various myths and try
to rate them as: "Known to be True," "Known to be False," "Suspected to be
True," "Suspected to be False," and "Unknown/Unverified.

Usually, there are clear facts that make an item "Known to be True" or
"Known to be False." But when there are disputes, these decisions are made
by consensus. It's tempting to take such a source as definitive, but in
several cases, I happen to know for certain (complete 100% conviction) that
several "Known to be True" items are not true at all and that a few "Known
to be False" items really happened. (I'd rate overall accuracy of
informaiton at snopes.com at about 97+ percent, which is excellent, but not
flawless.)

The third point: Don't just accept whatever someone states as definitive
fact just because it's been professionally published and authoritatively
stated. Rather than discarding the claim as a total myth, I'd stick with the
general idea that due to the remoteness of Appalachia versus Britain that
there is a fair amount of obsolete, obscure and out-of-date Elizabethan
English floating around.

As I said, the ability to mount an argument and put it in a book doesn't
equal winning that argument.

tvp

[Andreas Rusterholz]

On 1月18日, 午後11:46, "Tad Perry" <tadpe...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >"aesthete8" <art...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>

...

> tvp- 引用テキストを表示しない -
>
> - 引用テキストを表示 -

What exactly would you like to rebut in your "very good rebuttal"?

Andreas Rusterholz

[Tad Perry]

"Andreas Rusterholz" <ruste...@infoseek.jp> wrote in message
news:1d55a5e2-d5e1-49ce...@w9g2000pbm.googlegroups.com...

The idea that it's just a myth.

tvp

[aesthete8]

Every TAIRA I ever met had roots in Okinawa.

[aesthete8]

On Jan 9, 9:12 am, Wasabi <blue.mounta...@org.invalid> wrote:

Nisei in the U.S. still use words like SHASHINKI and BENJO and
expressions like UCHI NO OKAASAN (instead of HAHA) which I understand
are no longer used in Japan.

[Tad Perry]

"aesthete8" <art...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:37ddd222-9566-4971...@j15g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...

****

The point of my other post exactly. This is a commonly known linguistic
phenomenon. While saying that North Carolinians still speak Elizabethan
English is obviously a complete stretch, the fact remains that there are
many interesting artifacts left.

tvp

[muchan]

On Jan 19, 10:28 am, aesthete8 <art...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nisei in the U.S. still use words like SHASHINKI and BENJO and
> expressions like UCHI NO OKAASAN (instead of HAHA) which I understand
> are no longer used in Japan.

I believe SHASHINKI, BENJO and UCHI NO OKAASAN are still commonly
used in Japan. I don't buy your point here.

muchan

[Don Kirkman]

On Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:14:53 -0800, "Tad Perry" <tadp...@comcast.net>
wrote:

>"aesthete8" <art...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:37ddd222-9566-4971...@j15g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
>On Jan 9, 9:12 am, Wasabi <blue.mounta...@org.invalid> wrote:
>> aesthete8<art...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > But that's what I've always wondered--how does anyone know how a word
>> > or music sounded in the historical past?
>>
>> Often from transliteration into other languages, either through explicit
>> glossaries or implicitly from loanwords. Since pronunciations will
>> probably
>> change at different times in different languages, back and forth
>> transliteration can let you zigzag back through the centuries and figure
>> out the original pronunciation was likely to be.
>>
>> I recall being surprised to discover that the letter we call pi is called
>> 'pee' by the modern Greeks, it turns out the ancient Greek pronunciation
>> of
>> that letter has survived in English long after it disappeared in Greece.
>
>Nisei in the U.S. still use words like SHASHINKI and BENJO and
>expressions like UCHI NO OKAASAN (instead of HAHA) which I understand
>are no longer used in Japan.

>The point of my other post exactly. This is a commonly known linguistic
>phenomenon. While saying that North Carolinians still speak Elizabethan
>English is obviously a complete stretch, the fact remains that there are
>many interesting artifacts left.

And Nikkei in the US may not only still use [some of] the old words,
but may also retain regional terms from where their family originated.
One I can still remember is "erai" for "tired", from the Fukuoka area.

FWIW, some of those aging terms were still being used in study
materials in schools teaching Japanese to foreigners into the 1950s.
--
Don Kirkman
don...@charter.net

[Andreas Rusterholz]

> tvp- 引用テキストを表示しない -
>
> - 引用テキストを表示 -

That's exaclty what the author of that article says: "Scholars would
say that mountain speech has more archaisms than other types of
American English, but that's about it. They certainly wouldn't put a
label like 'Elizabethan' on it."

That means there is no need to write a rebuttal.

Andreas Rusterholz

[Bart Mathias]

I can imagine uchi-no okaasan being used for "my wife." Am I way off base?
--
Bart Mathias <mat...@hawaii.edu>

[Bart Mathias]

On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:46:48 -0800
"Tad Perry" <tadp...@comcast.net> wrote:

> [...]

> Consider this: In Japan, the Okinawa dialect is said to be more like the
> Japanese spoken in the Heian Period than any of the other dialects. The
> reasoning being that, existing at the outside edge of influence from the
> Japanese power center, other influences have been slower to reach there and
> change things. This is generally accepted and not considered "a myth" at
> all.

Just curious. To *which* Okinawan dialect are you referring? They tend to differ
considerably. Granted, some do retain hints of early Japanese. But how much
would the basically three-vowel system of Naha be like pre-Nara, even
assuming (as I do) that the eight vocalisms of that time derived from an earlier
four or five-vowel system?
--
Bart Mathias <mat...@hawaii.edu>

[Tad Perry]

"Andreas Rusterholz" <ruste...@infoseek.jp> wrote in message

news:6c4433c1-27b5-4bbf...@kj5g2000pbc.googlegroups.com...

I would still say that just like the claim "Elizabethan English is spoken in
the Appalachians" is an overstatement, the idea that the general claim is a
total myth, as claimed in the article title, is also an overstatement. The
truth lies in the middle. There's always room to argue, as you are proving,
just as there is always room to agree, which few want to do.

tvp

[Andreas Rusterholz]

On 1月21日, 午前7:58, "Tad Perry" <tadpe...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I would still say that just like the claim "Elizabethan English is spoken in
> the Appalachians" is an overstatement, the idea that the general claim is a
> total myth, as claimed in the article title, is also an overstatement.

I think that this is a misinterpretation of the title.
(And why do you ignore what the author says in the article?)

> The truth lies in the middle. There's always room to argue, as you are proving,
> just as there is always room to agree, which few want to do.
>
> tvp
>

For me it's still not clear what you want to argue for.

Andreas Rusterholz

[Jim Beard]

>> Consider this: In Japan, the Okinawa dialect is said to be more like
>> the Japanese spoken in the Heian Period than any of the other dialects.
>> The reasoning being that, existing at the outside edge of influence
>> from the Japanese power center, other influences have been slower to
>> reach there and change things. This is generally accepted and not
>> considered "a myth" at all.

The problem is warped slightly by Okinawa being in more frequent contact
with Chinese, not merely sailors but government officials as well. The
Chinese sent envoys to virtually all areas in the vicinity of China --
not something unique to Okinawa. And more were sent to nearby Okinawa
than to the more distant Japanese population centers.

To digress, for ulterior purpose, there was a time when geolinguistic
chronology or some such was popular in Japan, with all sorts of studies
looking at how the Japanese language was changing over the centuries and
how those changes demonstrated Japan's superior abilities to evolve and
adapt.

The speed of changes in IIRC the trend toward a larger vocabulary of more
precisely defined terms, and another toward "more analytic" semantics,
were two aspects much touted to demonstrate Japanese superiority.

With most studies comparing Japanese linguistic evolution with that of
European languages, one scholar decided to do a study of Okinawan, for
comparative purposes. He did the study, and made the mistake of
publishing it. Okinawan was evolving faster than the Japanese language
on the mainland. And he reported that finding.

That was the last paper he ever published. And geolinguistic chronology
or whatever it was called diminished greately in popularity thereafter.

I have forgotten the scholar's name. Someday I may dig the old college
books out of the attic, and see if I can find it.

[muchan]

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:21:20 -0600
Jim Beard <jdb...@patriot.net> wrote:

(snip)

> With most studies comparing Japanese linguistic evolution with that
> of European languages, one scholar decided to do a study of Okinawan,
> for comparative purposes. He did the study, and made the mistake of
> publishing it. Okinawan was evolving faster than the Japanese
> language on the mainland. And he reported that finding.
>
> That was the last paper he ever published. And geolinguistic
> chronology or whatever it was called diminished greately in
> popularity thereafter.
>
> I have forgotten the scholar's name. Someday I may dig the old
> college books out of the attic, and see if I can find it.
>
> Cheers!
>
> jim b.
>

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

muchan

[gggg gggg]

According to this:

- KFTT

The Muromachi period dictionary " Setsuyoshu " listed the two pronunciations ' taimei ' and ' daimyo , ' the former meaning a Shugo ( a major feudal lord ) , and the latter meaning a wealthy person ( the wealthy class ) .
室町 時代 の 辞書 『 節用 集 』 に は 、 「 たい めい 」 ・ 「 だいみょう 」 の 2 音 を 載せ 、 前者 は 守護 ( 大領主 ) 、 後者 は 銭持 ( 富裕 層 ) の 意 で あ る と し た 。
KFTT...The Nippo Jisho ( Japanese-Portuguese dictionary ) from the beginning of the 17th century also listed the two pronunciations , ' daimyo ' and ' taimei , ' but there was no clear distinction in meaning , and both were used for major feudal lords .

https://glosbe.com/en/ja/Taimei

[gggg gggg]

On Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 9:32:03 PM UTC-8, aesthete8 wrote:
> Did you know that in the 1300's, "daimyo" was pronounced "taimai"?

https://books.google.com/books?id=mA5dDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT56&dq=taimai+daimyo&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinq6jf2ML7AhUTJEQIHdm4BFMQ6AF6BAgHEAI#v=onepage&q=taimai%20daimyo&f=false