yin & yang and the i ching

8/10/2019 Yin & Yang and the I Ching

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Yin & Yáng

and the I Ching

In India the theory of the three elements in the Chândogya Upanishad led to the theory of the three forces, the gun.as, and to the later theory of five elements. In China, the theory of five elements coexisted early with the

theory of two forces: and . These can also simply be called the "two forces," (where ch'i,

, is the "breath" or vital energy of the body, but also simply air, steam, or weather). In the Spring and

Autumn Period there was actually a Yin and Yang School. Later its theories were accepted by nearlyeveryone, but especially by Taoism. The implications of the theory are displayed in the great book of

divination, the I Ching , , the "Book of Changes."

Yin originally meant "shady, secret, dark, mysterious, cold." It thus could mean the shaded, northside of a mountain or the shaded, south bank of a river. Yang in turn meant "clear, bright,

the sun, heat," the opposite of yin and so the lit, south side of a mountain or the lit, north bank of a river. From these basic opposites, a complete system of opposites waselaborated. Yin represents everything about the world that is dark, hidden, passive,

receptive, yielding, cool, soft, and feminine. Yang represents everything about the world that isilluminated, evident, active, aggressive, controlling, hot, hard, and masculine. Everything in the world can beidentified with either yin or yang. Earth is the ultimate yin object. Heaven is the ultimate yang object. Of thetwo basic Chinese "Ways," Confucianism is identified with the yang aspect, Taoism with the yin aspect.

Although it is correct to see yin as feminine and yang as masculine, everything in the world is really amixture of the two, which means that female beings may actually be mostly yang and male beings mayactually be mostly yin. Because of that, things that we might expect to be female or male because they clearlyrepresent yin or yang, may turn out to be the opposite instead.

Taoism takes the doctrine of yin and yang, and includes it in its own theory of change. Like Anaximander andHeraclitus, Taoism sees all change as one opposite replacing the other. The familiar diagram of Yin and

Yang, the , the "Great Ultimate" [Wade-Giles T'ai-chi] diagram, shows the opposites flowing

into each other. The diagram also illustrates, with interior dots, the idea that each force contains the seed of the other, so that they do not merely replace each other but actually become each other. (The earliest attestedexample of the diagram, strangely enough, occurs on a Roman shield illustrated in the fifth century Notitia

Dignitatum.)





Unlike Heraclitus, Taoism sees change as violent only if the Tao [Dào] is

opposed: If Not Doing, , and No Mind, , are practiced, then

the Tao guides change in a natural, easy way, making for beauty and life. Sincetrying to be in control is a yang (or Confucian) attribute, Taoism sees NotDoing (and Taoism itself) on the yin side of things; but since Not Doing doesnot literally mean doing nothing, Taoism can use the language of passivity andreceptivity to mean something that is actually quite active.

That is especially obvious in the use of the term [Wade-Giles jou2], "soft,

pliant, yielding, gentle." Róudào, the "yielding way," is read in Japanese as judô and is the name of a popular Martial Art. Judo doesn't look at all yielding or gentle, but it does employ Taoist doctrine in so far as it is notsupposed to originate force or an attack but takes the attack of an opponent and uses its own force against it.

Thus the great economist F.A. Hayek invoked Taoism in the defense of capitalism, a system that does notseem particularly yielding or gentle, but is based on the principle that government should "leave alone"(laissez faire) private property and voluntary exchanges and contracts. The free market would thus be the NotDoing of government.

When it comes to the five elements, earth, water, and wood are clearly to be associated withyin. Water, the softest and most yielding element, becomes the supreme symbol of yin and theTao in the Tao Te Ching . Fire (the hottest element) and metal (the hardest) both are associated

with yang. Nevertheless, the Blue Dragon, , that symbolizes wood

is a principal symbol of , while the White Tiger, , that

symbolizes metal is a principal symbol of . This kind of reversal turns up

frequently in the I Ching .

The I Ching , , is based on the principle of a broken line, , representing yin, and

an unbroken line, , representing yang. During the Shang Dynasty (1523-1028 BC), questions that could be answered with a "yes" or a "no" were written on tortoise shells. The shells were heated, then doused inwater, which caused them to crack. A broken crack, , was interpreted as a "no" answer, an unbrokencrack, , as a "yes." The I Ching elaborates on this, by grouping the lines into sets of threes (the trigrams)and into sets of sixes (the hexagrams).

There are eight trigrams:Among the trigrams it is noteworthy that in all the children, the sex is determined by the odd line, so that thetrigrams are predominately the opposite quality from the sex of the child. Also, we expect water to beassociated with yin and fire with yang, but water is the second son and fire the second daughter . The other children are associated with such things as we might expect, e.g. water turns up again in the third daughter asthe Lake.

The arrangement of the trigrams around the compass reflects Chinese geomancy ( ), i.e. the

determination of the auspicious or inauspicious situation and orientation of places (cities, temples, houses, or graves). Chinese cities are properly laid out as squares, with gates in the middle of the sides facing due north,





east, south, and west. The diagonal directions are then regarded asspecial "spirit" gates: northwest is the Heaven Gate; southwest theEarth Gate; southeast the Man Gate; and northeast the Demon GateThe northeast was thus the direction from which malevolentsupernatural influences might particularly be expected. Thesituation of the old Japanese capital city of Kyôto is particularlyfortunate. To thenortheast is a

conspicuous, twin- peaked mountain,Mt. Hiei(corresponding to theMountain trigram),which is crownedwith a vastestablishment of Buddhist temples toguard the DemonGate. Later, Tôkyô

(originally calledEdo) was laid outwith temples to thenortheast on rising

ground in the Ueno district; but both the ground and thetemples are now entirely surrounded and obscured by the sprawl of Tôkyô. [note]

The trigrams contrast the Moutain, , with the Lake, . A lake is essentially a valley filed with water

(both with Yin associations), and the mountain in general may be also contrasted with the valley, . We

see this contrast in related characters, such as , "an immortal," and , "common, vulgar, worldly."

Each of these contains the "mountain" and "valley" characters, respectively, with the radical for "person,"

. The idea seems to be that immortal beings live in the mountains, either because that is where the divine

belong (as on Mt. Olympus) or because that it where Taoist adepts, who achieve immortality, practice their

asceticism. Thus, Taoists themselves can be called , the "immortal-ists" or "school of the immortals.

What is down in the valley is then common, mundane, and vulgar.

The I Ching uses the trigrams by combining pairs of them into 64 hexagrams. The hexagrams reuse thetrigrams by combining pairs of them into 64 hexagrams. The hexagramsrepresent states of affairs, and the I Ching is consulted through theconstruction of a hexagram to answer one's question. The construction iscarried out either through a complicated process of throwing and countingyarrow stalks, or by throwing three coins. The obverse (head) of each coin isworth 3 points (odd numbers are yang), while the reverse (tail) is worth 2(even numbers are yin). Three coins will therefore add up to either 6, 7, 8, or 9.

The numbers 7 and 8 represent "young" yang and yin, respectively. Starting from the bottom up, these add a plain yang, , or a plain yin, , line. The numbers 6 and 9, in turn, represent "old" yin and yang,respectively, and are called "changing lines." This illustrates an important aspect of the theory of yin and





yang: Because the "Way of the Tao is Return," yin and yang, when they reach their extremes, actuallybecome their opposites. The "old" lines therefore change into their opposites,giving us two hexagrams if any changing lines are involved: the firsthexagram, representing the current state of affairs; and the second hexagram,after the changes have been made, representing the future state of affairs.

Changing lines are usually denoted by writing for a 9 and for a 6.The text of the I Ching describes the significance of each hexagram and alsothe special meaning to be attached to the presence of any changing lines.

Fantasy Factorial Hexagrams

Chinese Elements and Associations

The Solar Terms and the Chinese Calendar

Psychological Types

Gender Stereotypes and Sexual Archetypes

History of Philosophy, Chinese Philosophy

History of Philosophy

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Copyright (c) 1997, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved

Yin & Yáng and the I Ching , Note

As it happens, there is a conspicuous mountain north-east of Los Angeles Valley College. Indeed, there is awhole mountain range, the San Gabriel Mountains. Beyond the lower Verdugo Mountains in the foreground,which rise to 3126 feet, there is the conspicuous Mt. Lukens in the San Gabriels, which is 5074 feet high.Behind Mt. Lukens runs Big Tujunga Canyon. There are much higher peaks in the San Gabriels (up to Mt.San Antonio, "Old Baldy," at 10,064 ft., which is east and outside of the image provided here), as can be seenin the image, but these are hidden from the perspective of Valley College. Unfortunately, there are noBuddhist temples, as far as I know, upon Mt. Lukens. Los Angeles could use the protection.

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Categories of Chinese Characters

Chinese characters are the last ancient ideographic writing system that survives in modern usage. This was aclose call. In Vietnamese, the Latin alphabet is used; in Korean, the hangul phonetic system is now used.





Japanese has its own syllabaries, the kana, which could easily replace characters

altogether, as in the past they sometimes did. Both China and Japan were contemplating atransition to the Latin alphabet (the Pinyin system prepared the way for this in Chinese).Ironically, it is the most modern technology which has saved the most ancient writing.Computer assisted writing makes the use of characters relatively convenient, and the needfor vast metal fonts for printing and even typewriting has now been eliminated.

Although Chinese characters are originally and basically ideographic, writing whole words, the language ovetime has become more polysyllabic and many characters now do not occur in isolation. The system thus can

be said to have become morphographic, writing semantic elements of words, morphemes, rather than ideas orwords as wholes. [note]

The characters and their definitions here are from Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary [Harvard, 1972]. The pronunciation of each character, however, is rendered in Pinyin. There are, understandably, disputes over theclassification system and over the assignment of individual characters. For instance, the very first example,dá, "big," is from the drawing of a man, and so can be considered "pictographic"; but since it doesn't mean"man," but "big," it might be considered "indicative" instead.

1. Pictographic: These are characters that originate with pictures of the objects in question. In the ShangDyansty, these counted for 23% of all characters. By the Han they were down to only 4%, and during

the Sung only 3%. The characters atright were all originally little

pictures. "Great" was the picture of aman, while "mountain," "field,""woman," "horse," "shield," and"tree" were just that.

John DeFrancis [The Chinese Language, Fact and Fantasy,University of Hawaii Press, 1984,1986, & Visible Speech, University

of Hawaii Press, 1989], one of the greatest scholars of Chinese, has the view that language (or meaning) is essentially spoken (i.e. sound) and that pictograms really stand for the words rather thanfor the things. However, it seems the most natural to say that a picture of a man, a woman, or a treesimply represents those things directly. While all writing systems, including Chinese, develop phoneticelements, the thesis that meaning is essentially sound is destroyed by the use of sign language amongthe profoundly deaf, for whom language and meaning have no aural component at all. At one time, itwas not believed that the profoundly deaf had any true language, just because sign language was nottaken seriously; but this view is now insupportable. Indeed, from Plato we already have the observationthat the deaf sign and that this is a logical accommodation to that condition:

SOCRATES: Answer me this question: If we had no voice or tongue, and wished to make

things known to one another, should we not try, as mute [and deaf] people actually do, tomake signs [ sêmaínein] with our hands and head and body generally? ["Cratylus," 433 E,Cratylus, Parmenides, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, translated by F.N. Fowler, LoebClassical Library, Harvard, 1926, 1963, p.133]

Sign languages are known to develop and exist with no connection to spoken language, and the form ofsigns has its own dynamic, unrelated to sounds. Thus, even as a Chinese character is classified byradical and phonetic, a sign can be specified by [1] the shape of the hand(s), [2] position(s), [3]orientation(s), and [4] motion(s) (if any).

2. Simple Indicative or Ideographic: Some abstract concepts can be suggested with certain diagrams,





to the current understanding), not just suggest it, as with the Chinese.

In the diagram at right, the basic phoneticvalue of "horse" (ma) turns up in the purely

phonetic interrogative particle, and in a wordfor "mother." The character for "to tie, bind"occurred as a phonetic in the alternativecharacter given above for "heap of stone/boulders" (lei). The "fields" compoundcharacter above (lei again) occurs as a

phonetic with the character for "stone" to mean"roll stones down hill." "Shield" ( gan) occurswith "sun" in "sunset," with "woman" in"crafty," villainous," "false," and with "tree" in"shaft of a spear," "pole." "Middle" occurswith the radical "heart," zhong , to mean"conscientious," "loyal," "honest," etc. It is these characters that provide some of the evidence for thereconstruction of the pronunciation of earlier forms of Chinese.

Since radical and phonetic characters already exist in the Shang Dynasty, there clearly was a long

period of development prior to this. But the evidence for this is scant, and the ultimate origin of Chinese characters is unclear.

Dialects of Chinese



Philosophy of History

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Categories of Chinese Characters, note

Since Chinese characters originally wrote whole words, it is now fashionable to say that they are "logograms"(logos = "word") rather than "ideograms." On this view, Chinese characters (or the units of any such suchwriting system) have no meaning apart from the words of Chinese. They are derivative of the words and aresemantically, functionally, and even ontologically dependent on them. The notion that the characters couldexist independently of the words, or of the Chinese langauge, is incomprehensible.

As noted, this is already rather behind the development of Chinese, where characters usually writemorphemes. However, the principal reason for the change in terms is ideological rather than linguistic.Because of the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ferdinand de Saussure, the view has grown thatlanguage is a self-contained and self-referential system, without connection to the external world or to truth.





Because of this, the notion that there are "ideas" or concepts thatexist independently of language and embody meanings with a realrelationship to the world has fallen into disfavor. So "ideogram"must go.

Unfortunately, those who are at pains to demonstrate their adherenceto fashionable opinion have missed the point. The issue is notwhether ideas or truth exist, but whether a writing system likeChinese characters directly matches up with spoken language. Itdoesn't. This is the most conspicuous in something like AncientEgyptian hieroglyphics, where certain glyphs are "genericdeterminatives," which correspond to no words in the language butgive a clue as to the general meaning of the word being written. As ithappens, Chinese has something rather like generic determinatives,i.e. the "radical" which is that part of the character that gives a clueto the meaning and functions as the basis of classifying characters in a Chinese dictionary. These visualelements of the written language do a job where the written language may not fully represent the sounds of spoken language, which is what happens in Egyptian or Chinese. The written language does it in its own wayand so takes on a life of its own.

Since the fashionable view is that language is self-referential, we might wonder why opinion could not moveover to the view that written language breaks away from the spoken language and takes on a self-containedlife of its own. Clinging to the notion that written language refers to spoken language would seem tocontradict part of the fashionable thesis, that there is no external reference. Indeed. But the move does not

take place, perhaps because the connection of the written tothe spoken language is too obvious (though one might think that their connection to the world would then be equallyobvious, which it isn't to the bien pensants), but perhaps evenmore so because of an old prejudice that language can onlyexist as spoken language. This latter assertion is actuallymade by John DeFrancis in the work cited in the text above --

and reconfirmed to me in personal correspondence.

The notion that language can only truly consist of sounds isrefuted by the existence of fully functioning sign languagesamong the profoundly deaf. Indeed, there are now caseswhere deaf children, with no previous contact with other deafindividuals, have been introduced together into new schoolsfor the deaf and have spontaneously and quickly developed acompletely new sign language between themselves. In the

past, the possibility that sign languages could be theequivalent of spoken language was simply not believed, and

even educators of the deaf thought that signs could properlyonly be used to spell the words of spoken languages. Word of

the existence of true sign languages of the deaf has apparently still not reached everyone.

The truth is that visual (whether written or sign) and spoken languages match up to each other by way of meaning. There are ideas, concepts, and reference. That is why languages can be translated into each other --though, indeed, there are philosophers, like W.V.O. Quine, in the self-referential tradition, who openly assertthe "indeterminacy of translation," as though this were not contradicted by centuries of actual translating. Theexistence of meaning has been ably demonstrated by Jerrold Katz. Thus, Chinese characters, which writeideas, as spoken language speaks them (with, we might say, "ideophones" -- sounds that speak ideas), areideograms. Since they historically correspond to Chinese words or morphemes, they can also be called





logograms or morphograms. Since they oftenoriginally consisted of pictures of objects,they can also be called "pictograms," a termalso in fashionable disfavor. If there are

pictures of objects, after all, we might needto admit that there are objects, and thatlanguage has something to do with them. Itis a shame when something so obvious

becomes shocking to educated opinion.

Why there is now this ideological preferenceis a good question. Such theories, however,are conformable to the "deconstructionist" or " post-modern" view that everything is a matter of power relationships -- something about equally inspired byMarx and by Nietzsche -- and unrelated to any actual truth or reality, except a political reality. People writingabout Chinese characters may not be aware of all the connections of the theories they promote, but it isusually the academic water within which they swim.

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The Dialects of Chinese

What are usually called the "dialects" of Chinese are really separatelanguages, all descended from the Chinese of the T'ang Dynasty.They are all about as far apart from each other now as English andDutch. However, they are all written with the same characters (with

some exceptions), which means that an educated person canunderstand (mostly) their written forms, and for cultural and

political reasons, as well as their historical origin, are regarded bythe Chinese as part of the same language. A new term has even

been introduced for this unusual situation, calling the languages"topolects," i.e. speech of the "place," topos.

The picture of the languages has changed somewhat over the years.Older sources (e.g. John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language, Fact and Fantasy, Hawaii, 1984; S. Robert Ramsey, The Languages of China, Princeton, 1987; and Nathan Sivin, editor, The

Contemporary Atlas of China, Houghton Mifflin, 1988) say thatthere are seven different languages, or six, since sometimes Gan islinked with Hakka, or with Xiang. More recently, Lynn Pan, in The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas[Harvard, 1999], lists ten languages, where Jin is separated from Mandarin, Hui from Wu, and Pinghua fromYue. Now, however, in The Sino-Tibetan Languages, edited by Graham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla[Routledge Language Family Series, Routledge, London, 2003], Jerry Norman ("The Chinese Dialects:Phonology") states, "If one takes mutual intelligibility as the criterion for defining the difference betweendialect and language, then one would have to recognize not eight [or seven, etc.] but hundreds of 'languages'in China" [p.72]. This appears to resolve the issue. What previously were regarded as separate languages, likeCantonese, are in fact families of languages. It is therefore not surprising that the "splitters" (those who like todivide groups, as opposed to "lumpers," who like to combine groups -- a typological difference) should begin





to divide the old languages into new ones. If there are really "hundreds"of languages involved, however, further splitting becomes pointless.

On the map at left, we see China of the late Empire divided by the

ethnic principle of the "five peoples." While the Hui, , might be

Turks or Uighurs, the term in general means "Muslims" and thusapplies to ethnic Chinese Muslims. Those Hui speak Mandarin and tend

to live in the area identified for the Han, , People on the map.

Otherwise, the dialects of Chinese all refer to languages of the HanPeople. Manchurian has all but disappeared and been replaced by Mandarin.

Within each of the groups of Chinese languages, there are also true dialects, which means that they aremutually intelligible. In Pan's book and The Sino-Tibetan Languages many dialects are shown for thelanguage groups. The confusion over all this -- couldn't everyone tell what forms of speech are mutuallyintelligible? -- was certainly due to the difficulties of doing research in China in the 20th century. Fromrevolution, to war, to revolution, to totalitarianism, China until recently was not the best place for graduatestudents wandering around with tape recorders asking strange questions. Such behavior would often have

evoked suspicion, arrest, or worse. Of course, there is also the problem of distinguishing dialects fromlanguages in general, when dialects may be intelligible to those nearby, while those at the extreme ends of arange may be incomprehensible to each other.

The table gives a classification of languages and dialects based on acombination of The Sino-Tibetan Languages and other sources.The 10 languages identified on the map from Pan's The

Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas are given in boldface; butthe overall organization is in terms of the three groups and six"dialect familes" of The Sino-Tibetan Languages [p.6]. While Ganand Xiang and now definitely separated, Hakka has come to be

included under Gan -- though this is not consistently seen in the

book. "Hakka" itself is an interesting term, in Mandarin,

in Cantonese, meaning "guest, visitor, traveller, stranger,

merchant," or "customer." Althought there is a concentrated area of Hakka speakers, the language is otherwise spoken in widelyscattered areas, where it has been taken by, indeed, Hakka traders.

"Mandarin" is a word from Sanskrit (mantrin) by way of Malay (menteri) and Portuguese (mandarim). This

meant "counselor." The word was applied because the Portuguese were originally dealing with traders alongthe southern coast of China, where, of course, many languages were spoken, but not Mandarin. Whenofficials from the Capital came down to deal with the Portuguese, they spoke a different language, which thePortuguese had not otherwise encountered. Hence the name, the language of the "counselors". However, thismay also have simply been a translation of what the counselors were calling their own language, which was

the , "Official Language," or even "Language of the Officials," i.e. the Mandarins [note]. In Modern

Chinese, Mandarin is the , "Common Language," or the , "National Language." These





Dialect Family Initials Finals Tones Syllables

Mandarin, 16 39 4 2496

Gan, 19 59 6 6726

Hakka, 17 69 6 7038

Xiang, 23 37 6 5106

Min, 15 57 7 5985

Wu/Shanghai, 27 50 7 9450

Yue/Cantonese, 20 53 9 9540

Northern Min, -- 10 M

Eastern Min, , Fuzhou -- 9 M

Puxian Min, , Putian & Xianyou -- 2 M

Southern Min, , Amoy-Swatow [ Xiamen], 2.8%, 28 M -- 46 M

Yuè, , Cantonese, Guandong , Guangxi, 5.0%, 50 M, 47,500 k -- 54 M

Pingua, , Guangxi

It is noteworthy that the extension of Mandarin into the Southwest was in part theresult of veterans being settled there after theMongols were ejected from China and the

Ming Dynasty founded.

The table is a comparison of dialect familiesfrom The Sino-Tibetan Languages [p.127].The statistics, of course, are fromrepresentative languages in each group. I haverearranged the list to move the apparentlymore conservative languages towards the

bottom of the table, though, of course, not allthe indications are consistent. With the largestnumber of tones and of syllables, Cantonese

wins as the most conservative, but then Xiangand Shanghai both have more initials thanCantonese -- and Hakka has an anomalouslylarge number of finals and syllables.Mandarin has clearly undergone the greatest

phonetic simplification.


Examples of Dialect Differences Between Peking, Shanghai and, Canton

Pronouncing Mandarin Initials

Mandarin Finals and Syllables

The Contrast between Classical and Modern Chinese





Shanghai Peking

Philosophy of Science, Linguistics




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The Dialects of Chinese, Note

The word "Mandarin" has also been explained as derived from Chinese, as , "Manchu great man"

[cf. Dah-an Ho, "The Characteristics of Mandarin Dialects," The Sino-Tibetan Languages, p.127]. However,this looks very much like a folk etymology, and an anachronistic one, since the Portuguese had been in Chinamore than a century (since 1518) before the Manchus took over the country (1644). The language of theofficials was going to be called something long before any officials were Manchurian.

There is also the problem of the pronunciation: probably was not pronounced with an r in the era in

question. The Wade-Giles writing of the syllable, jen, reflects an older pronunciation, which we see reflectedas a y in Cantonese and an actual English-like j in Japanese. Indeed, this is probably why "Japan,"

, is pronounced in English as it is, with an older Chinese pronunciation -- in Japanese itself,

the j/y/r can and does here turn up here an n.

I have now found some good evidence of the anachronism, as I suggest, of this claim. "Mandarin" was usedin reference to Chinese officials as early as 1552 by the Portuguese writer Fernão Lopez de Castanheda in his

Historia do descobrimento e conquista da India. The text is cited by Yule & Burnell in their classic AGlossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases ["Hobson-Jobson," Curzon Press, 1886, 1985,"Mandarin," p.550-551].

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Examples of Dialect Differences BetweenPeking, Shanghai and, Canton

In the table superscript numbers are the tones, and brackets contain Pinyin writings (with superscript toneswhere HTML does not contain the appropriate diacritic).





p- pu1 "wave" po1 [bo1]

p'- p'u1 "slope" p'o1 [po1]

b- bu2 "old woman" p'o2 [pó]

t- tong1 "east" tong1 [dong1]

t'- t'ong1

"be open" t'ong1

[tong1

]

d- dong2 "be alike" t'ong2 [tóng]

k- kuong1 "light" kuang1 [guang1]

k'- k'uong1 "frame" k'uang1 [kuang1]

g- guong2 "mad, wild" k'uang2 [kuáng]

Cantonese Peking

-t/0 kat7a "cough" k'e2 (sou4) [ké(sòu)]

-t/0 pat7a "brush" pi3 [bi3]

-t/0 yüt7b/8 "moon" yüeh4 [yuè]

-t/0 yat7a/8 "sun, day" jih4 [rì]

-k/0 paak 7b "hundred" pai3 [bai3]

-k/0 sik 7a "color" (yen2)se4 [(yán)sè]

-k/0 kwok 7byü4

"national language"kou2yü3 [guóyu3]

-p/0 t'aap7b "pagoda" t'a3 [ta3]

-p/0 yap8 "enter" ju4 [rù]

-p/0 sap8 "ten" shih2 [shí]

The Wu ( ) dialect of Shanghai is noteworthy

because it retains the distinction between voiced andunvoiced, aspirated and unaspirated stops that existed inT'ang Chinese. In Mandarin the voiced stops havedisappeared. In these examples, the voiced stops haveseen assimilated to the aspirated ones.

Cantonese ( ) is noteworthy because it retains from

T'ang Chinese a greater variety of finals. In Mandarin, asyllable must end in a vowel or in n or ng. In Cantonese,syllables can also end in p, t, k , or m as well. Words

borrowed from Chinese into Korean, Japanese, andVietnamese often also preserve evidence of the older final consonants. Thus "China"(Mandarin Zhongguó, "MiddleCountry") in Korean is Chung-guk and in Japanese Chû-koku. Both of them have an extra consonant in"country" where Mandarin doesn't --

but Cantonese (Jòong-gwok ) does.

I had a lingustics professor once who said that you couldget a kind of "instant Proto-Indo-European" bycombining Greek vowels and Sanskrit consonants. Well,we can get a kind of "instant T'ang Chinese" bycombining Shanghai initials and Cantonese finals. Theevidence is poor for older versions of Chinese.Cantonese also preserves the larger number of tones that

T'ang Chinese had. Mandarin onlyhas four now, but Cantonese has six,or even nine if the tones of finals thatend in stops are counted separately,which they sometimes are.

The most daring theory is that theChinese of Confucius's day didn'teven have tones. Evidence for this isthat other members of the Sino-Tibetan language family

do not have tones, while the nearby family of the Daic languages (like Thai) all have tones. In another

adjacent language family, the Austroasiatic (Mon-Khmer) group, some languages have tones (likeVietnamese) and others do not. It is tempting to see the phenomenon as a South-East Asian Sprach Bund where the Daic tones have influenced some languages in the Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic families.

At left are examples of the Cantonese tones, using the notation in Teach Yourself Cantonese by R. Bruce[Teach Yourself Books, Hodder and Stoughton, 1970, 1976, pp.12-13]. Different tone symbols are notneeded for the 7th, 8th, and 9th tones (in other treatments, as in the table above, the 7th and 8th tones arestyled 7a and 7b, while the 9th tone becomes the 8th). These words will look different in A ConciseCantonese-English Dictionary by Yang Mingxin [Guangdong Higher Education Publishing House, 1999].First of all, the latter uses an adapted Pinyin alphabet, where "x" is used for "s" and "g" for final "k." Second,although Pinyin introduced the use of Greek-like accents to show tones, the Dictionary reverts to the old





Wade-Giles way of simply numbering the tones with superscripts. Also, theDictionary uses simplified forms of some of the characters. I have used theunsimplified characters in Bruce where these are available. The Yale system of Romanization, with discussion of some alternatives (though not the Pinyin) is used inthe English-Cantonese Dictionary, by Kwan Choi Wah, et al. [The ChineseUniversity Press, Hong Kong, 1991].

Dictionaries or grammars of Shanghai Chinese in English seem to all be out of print.

A nice example of a difference between Mandarin and Cantonese is a surname. Thisis Wú in the former, Ng in the latter. The Cantonese name is one of many words that

are simply a syllabic ng. There is also a syllabic m in Cantonese, which is , "not,"

in Mandarin. That is the only word with that pronunciation in A Concise Cantonese- English Dictionary [pp.260-262]. Although it seems like there ought to be, there is nosyllabic n in Cantonese. There is more than one character

used for the Cantonese surname. At right, we see the traditional character first, thena recent simplified one to the right of the pronunciation. This was also the name of the Kingdom of Wu, oneof the states of the Three Kingdoms Period in Chinese history, and of the modern language of Shanghai. At

far right is an alternative character used, at least in Cantonese, for the surname. My only question is that thefirst character (with its simplification) and the second are pronounced differently. In Mandarin, the first has a2nd tone, the second a 3rd. In Cantonese, the first has a 4th tone, the second a 5th (with the symbols used inTeach Yourself Cantonese). I originally learned of the two possible characters from a young woman whosename actually was Ng, but I didn't know then to ask about the different tones. Perhaps someone can help meout.

Note that the Cantonese spellings in the table above are from Teach Yourself Cantonese, while, as noted, AConcise Cantonese-English Dictionary uses a form of Pinyin adapted from Mandarin. Thus, wordstraditionally ending in t/k/p are written d/g/b in the latter.



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Simple Initials

Pinyin Wade-Giles Pronunication

b p p, unaspirated ( spot )

p p' ph, aspirated ( pot )

m m m

f f f

d t t, unaspirated ( stop)

t t' th, aspirated (top)

n n n

l l l

g k k, unaspirated ( skit )

k k' k h, aspirated (kit )

h h h

Sibilant Initials


z ts ts, unaspirated

c ts ths, aspirated (hats)

s s s

Retroflex Initials


zh ch t.s., unaspirated

ch ch' t.hs., aspirated

sh sh s.

r j r


Chinese has the extraordinary structure that nearly every syllable has a semantic content, even if only ahistorical one. Each syllable is thus written with a Chinese character , which was originally a separate word.

Each syllable is analyzed into an "intitial" and a "final." The "final" contains the vowel, the tone, and the fina

consonant, if any. This structure is also applied to Koreanand Vietnamese, which borrowed Chinese writing andmany Chinese words, even though neither language waseven related to Chinese.

The "initials," apart from the tones, pose the greatestchallenge for foreigners trying to pronounce Chinese. Andnow we have two common systems for writing Mandarin,the older Wade-Giles and the recent Pinyin. The greatestchallenge is that Mandarin does not have voiced stops,like b, d, and g. These existed in T'ang Chinese (and have

been preserved in the Shanghai or Wu language), but have been lost in Mandarin. Instead, Mandarin contrastsaspirated stops with unaspirated stops. "Aspirates" have

breath coming out, "unaspirates" don't. In Wade-Giles,aspirates were indicated with an apostrophe, as in thename of the T'ang Dynasty. Sometimes it is said that anaspirated t is pronounced like the t in "hot house." Thisnot quite right, since the t there is in a separate syllable,and a separate word, from the "h" aspiration. Instead, itshould be noted that English contrasts, in certainenvironments, an aspirated from an unaspirated t. Thusthe t in "top" is aspirated, and the t in "stop" isunaspirated. Holding a hand in front of the mouth candetect the breath expelled in one and not expelled in theother. The Chinese unaspirated t can be duplicated by

pronouncing "stop" without the "s." Aspirations areindicated in the "pronunciation" column of the table witha superscript h.

Since there are no voiced stops in Mandarin, the Pinyinsystem conveniently uses the Latin letters for the voicedstops for unaspriated stops, and the Latin letters for theunvoiced stops for the aspirated stops. The English word

"stop" thus could be written in Pinyin as "sdob," whichlooks very odd, and has a final consonant unallowed byMandarin, but does use the proper values of the Pinyinconsonants.

The "retroflex" initials have the tongue curling up, as inthe similar series of sounds in Sanskrit and subsequentlanguages in India. But other Chinese dialects do notdistinguish retroflex from palatal initials. In fact, even inMandarin, retroflexes and palatals are really just differentallophones (sounds) of the same phonemes, i.e. they do





Palatal Initials


j ch tsh, unaspirated

q ch' thsh, aspirated (church)

x hs sh

Simple Initials and Group-a Finals

InitialsFinals

Ø á án áng ái áo

Ø

a an ang ai ao

b ba ban bang bai bao

p pa pan pang pai pao

m m ma man mang mai mao

not occur in the same environment and so can actually berepresented by the same signs (as in Wade-Giles).Retroflexes (and sibilants) occur only with a, o/e, and ufinals. Palatals occur only with i and ü finals. The "i"written with sibilants and retroflexes, e.g. "si" and "zhi,"does not represent a true i, but a "buzzing" for sibiliantsand an r for retroflexes.

The Wade-Giles system represents Chinese moreefficiently and familiarly. Pinyin, besides the phonemic

redundancy, has the drawback that the sound of a number of letters (like q and x) has nothing to do with howthey are pronounced in most Western languages. On the other hand, Pinyin makes a more elegant use of theLatin alphabet.


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Each syllable in Chinese is analyzed into an "intitial"and a "final." Initials of Mandarin are considered inthe section above. The "final" contains the vowel, the

tone, and the final consonant, if any. The tables hereshow nearly all the possible syllables in the Standardform of Mandarin Chinese, i.e. the Mandarin of Peking (Beijing). This is not actually all the syllables

because of the "Group-r" finals. Those are addedeither as "er" or "r" to the syllables shown. After a, o,e, u, and ng, "r" is added. After ai, an, and en, drop thei or n and add "r." After i and ü, add "er." and With"i," in, and un, drop the i or n and add "er."

The "Group-a" finals go with the simple, the retroflex





f

fa fan fang

d da dan dang dai dao

t ta tan tang tai tao

n na nan nang nai nao

l la lan lang lai lao

g ga gan gang gai gao

k ka kan kang kai kao

h ha han hang hai hao

Retroflex & Sibilant Initials and Group-a Finals

InitialsFinals

"i" a an ang ai ao

zh zhi zha zhan zhang zhai zhao

ch chi cha chan chang chai chao

sh shi sha shan shang shai shao

r ri ran rang rao

z zi za zan zang zai zao

c ci ca can cang cai cao

s si sa san sang sai sao

Simple Initials and Group-o/e Finals

InitialsFinals

ó é én éng éi óu óng

Ø e en eng ou

b bo ben beng bei

p po pe pen peng pei pou

m mo

men meng mei mou

f fo fen feng fei fou

d de

deng dei dou dong

t te teng tou tong

and the sibilant initials. The "i" final only occurs withthe retrolex and sibilant initials, and represents avowel with little kinship to an actual i. For theretroflexes, it is more of an r sound, while with thesibilants it is a vowel so reduced and indefinite that itis described as a "buzzing." Indeed, in the Yalesystem of transcription, the former is rendered with"r" and the latter with "z." Wade-Giles uses "ih" (or

"tzu" for Pinyin zi, etc.), thus distinguishing it fromthe simple "i" used with the palatals. In this way,neither Pinyin nor Wade-Giles give much of a cluefrom English phonology how to make the sound.Since the "i" is the only letter i that is not used withthe "Group-i" finals and the palatal initials, its

presence rather confuses the symmetry of the system,although there is no ambiguity (I will not sayconfusion), since "i" does only occur with theretroflex and sibilant initials. It is a cleaner and moreelegant solution than in Wade-Giles. Since Pinyin was

willing to pick phonetic values of the Latin alphabetfrom different languages, the undotted Turkish Imight have been considered for the "i" sound, thoughthis is not available in HTML and is, as noted,unnecessary.

Otherwise, the vowels in the table are as they are inWade-Giles. The syllabic m in included in the table

just as a reminder that there is such a thing inCantonese. In the index row, the tone is written over the vowel to show, where there might be ambiguity,which vowel is used.

With the "Group o/e" finals a major difference between Pinyin and Wade-Giles is that the latter writes the "ong" final as "ung." Since one may beused to seeing words like "Chung" in English, itsabsence from Pinyin is conspicuous.

Of priniciple interest here in the phonetic systemis the lack of contrast between the o and e finals.Where the final o is used, e is not; and where e is

used, o is not. That this was not always the caseis shown with two anomalous syllables against a

blue background. Pe and ho used to occur, butthey do no longer. The only minimal pairs witho/e are those with contrasting eng and ong finals,though there are a good number of these.

The pe syllable is found in the name "Peking,"which now, with the Pinyin Beijing being used,

people might just think of as some kind of mistake. It is not a mistake, just a transcription of





Simple Initials and Group-u Finals

InitialsFinals

ú uá uó uái uí uán ún uáng uéng

Ø wu wa wo wai wéi wan wen wang weng

b bu

p pu

m mu

f fud du

duo

dui duan dun

t tu tuo tui tuan tun

n nu nuo

nuan

l lu luo luan lun

g gu gua guo guai gui guan gun guang

k ku kua kuo kuai kui kuan kun kuang

n nen neng nei nou nong

l le len leng lei lou long

g ge gen geng gei gou gong

k ke ken keng kei kou kong

h ho he hen heng hei hou hong

Retroflex & Sibilant Initials and Group-o/e Finals

InitialsFinals

o e en eng ei ou ong

zh

zhe zhen zheng zhei zhou zhong

ch che chen cheng chou chong

sh she shen sheng shei shou

r re ren reng rou rong

z ze zen zeng zei zou zong

c ce cen ceng

cou cong

s se sen seng sou song

an older form of pronunication in Mandarin,where pe existed, and where the palatals in the"Group-i" finals had not yet developed from theiroriginal stops -- the word is still king inCantonese and was borrowed as kyô intoJapanese.

A difference between Pinyin and Wade-Giles thawould also apply to the "Group-a" finals above isthe initial r. In Wade-Giles, that is written j,which, pronounced r, must produce for Wade-Giles as much confusion as q and x in Pinyin.Again, this reflects some history. Since the r corresponds to a y in Cantonese ( yat for rì), andis often borrowed as (English) j into Japanese(e.g. jin for rén), writing j in Wade-Giles reflectsthe circumstance that this is pronounced y inGerman but j in English (the y pronunciation

being the original value of j as a modification of Latin i). However, the letter is also borrowed as ninto Japanese (e.g. nichi for rì), and r itself doesnot look much like a natural derivative of either yor j. So there seems to have been something elsegoing on in the original Chinese sound, whichmay have been more an ñ than a y.

In the Group-u finals, uo oftenturns up as just o in Wade-Giles. Otherwise, we see a lot

of possible syllables that arenot used. A curiosity in bothsystems is that ui is actually

pronounced more like ué (withthe accent from French). Weiis written more like it is

pronounced (with the anomalythat the tone goes on the e).That all this is the case may be

because the Mandarin e inisolation has more of the

reduced, schwa-like sound thatis familar from manyoccurrences in English (the lasa in "banana"), French (le), andGerman (Töne). We don't get a

pure Italian e or French é inMandarin.





h hu hua huo huai hui huan hun huang

Retroflex & Sibilant Initials and Group-u Finals

InitialsFinals

u ua uo uai ui uan un uang ueng

zh zhu zhua zhuo zhuai zhui zhuan zhun zhuang

ch chu chuo chuai chui chuan chun chuang

sh shu shua shuo shuai shui shuan shun shuang

r ru

ruo

rui ruan run

z zu zuo zui zuan zun

c cu cuo cui cuan cun

s su suo sui suan sun

Simple Initials and Group-i Finals

InitialsFinals

í iá iáo ié iú ián ín iáng íng ióng

Ø yi ya yao ye yóu yan yin yang ying yong

b bi

biao bie

bian bin

bing

p pi piao pie pian pin ping

m mi miao mie miu mian min ming

d di diao die diu dian

ding

t ti tiao tie tian ting

n ni niao nie niu nian nin niang ning

l li lia liao lie liu lian lin liang ling

Palatal Initials and Group-i Finals

InitialsFinals

i ia iao ie iu ian in iang ing iong

j ji jia jiao jie jiu jian jin jiang jing jiong

q qi qia qiao qie qiu qian qin qiang qing qiong

x xi xia xiao xie xiu xian xin xiang xing xiong

With the "Group-i" finals, wesee a number of systematicdifferences between Pinyin andWade-Giles. Ian here turns upas ien in Wade-Giles, and iongas iung. Although written ian,the a is a reduced vowel

pronounced still more like the ediscussed above.

We also see the most unfamiliaruse of letters in Pinyin, with qfor Wade-giles ch' and x for hs -- which itself was simply analternative to sh. X actually isused to write sh in somelanguages (e.g. Basque). I amnot aware of q being usedanywhere to write any variationof English ch. However,whether intentional or not, this

evokes a bit of the history, sinceq usually is pronounced like k,and q in Pinyin is used with aninitial that, although now a ch,was actually an original k. If that was the intention, in the useof q, it was cleverly done.





Simple and Palatal Initials and Group-ü Finals

InitialsFinals

ü üé üán ün

Ø yú yue yuan yún

j ju jue juan jun

q qu que quan qun

x xu xue xuan xun

n nü nüe

l lü lüe

The "Group-ü" finals feature the vowel ü, written and pronounced like the u-Umlaut in German (also usednow in Turkish). This is the sound i with lip-rounding,and so, being a front vowel like i, is found with the

palatal initials of the "Group-i" vowels.

Where Wade-Giles did not distinguish betweenretroflex and palatal initials with different letters, it didso by the circumstance that the palatals only occurredwith "Group-i" and "Group-ü" finals. Thus the ü wasalways fully written. Since Pinyin does differentiate theinitials with different letters, the need for the Umlaut,to separate "Group-u" from "Group-ü" finals, is mostlyeliminated. However, some writers do not seem torealize that this is not universally the case. Where theinitials are n or l, the Umlaut is still necessary. Thus, lüis sometimes improperly written as lu in Pinyin. The

retention of the Umlaut does create some graphic difficulties, since the tone must be written atop it in nü andlü, something that fonts may not often be called upon to do. Otherwise, its loss is a convenient simplification.



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The Contrast between Classical and Modern Chinese

Although both ancient and modern Chinese are mostly written with the same characters, the modern daughterlanguages have become very different from the ancient one. One of the most conspicious differences is just

that the terse, monosyllabic nature of Classical Chinese -- , "old writing," or , "literary





language" -- has given way to many more particles, polysyllabic words, and periphrasticidioms. The following story, given in both Classical Chinese and a translation into

modern Mandarin, -- or the , "colloquial speech, vernacular" --

illustrates the difference. This is also a salutary example for one's view of government, asConfucius indeed makes clear to his students. [I am unaware of the origin of this text.]

The modern Mandarin pronunciation is given for the Classical characters because the ancient pronuncation,

indeed the pronunciation before the T'ang Dynasty, is unknown. Even that of the T'ang is reconstructed anduncertain. The extreme simplifiction of Mandarin phonology, which would render the Classical languageambiguous if used as a spoken language today (too many words now being pronounced the same), explainsthe polysyllablic character of the modern language and the reduction of many characters to morphemes.

The same Classical text that can today be read as Mandarin could as well be read with Korean, Vietnamese,or Japanese versions of the Chinese words, or the Korean, Vietnamese, or Japanese translations of the words.

None of those languages is even related to Chinese, but since mediaeval, or even modern, Koreans,Vietnamese, and Japanese often wrote in Chinese, without, however, really speaking the language, their ownrenderings of the characters was customary. Since the ancient pronunciation of the Classical language isunknown, Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, and Sino-Japanese reading are really just as "authentic" for

Classical Chinese as a Modern Mandarin reading. Indeed, much of our evidence for the T'ang pronuncation oChinese is from the Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese readings, which were contemporary borrowings.

For example, the character for "mountain," now read shan in Mandarin, turns up as san in Korean,

in Vietnamese as so. n or núi, and in Japanese as san, sen, zan, or yama -- the last versions inVietnamese and Japanese being the native words. Similarly, we find the name of Japan itself, "Sun Source," as Rìben [Wade-Giles Jihpên] in Mandarin, Yatbóonin Cantonese, Ilbon in Korean, Nhâ.t-Bàn in Vietnamese, and Nippon or Nihon

in Japanese. The Cantonese word is, of course, cognate to the Mandarin. The Korean,Vietnamese, and Japanese are all borrowings from Chinese, pronounced in the local

manner. Native words for "sun" are hae in Korean, ma.t giò. i ("face of the sky") in Vietnamese, and hi in

Japanese (e.g. hi-no-maru, "circle of the sun," "sundisk"). The Japanese borrowed word for "sun" in isolationis nichi, but this is just the pronunciation of niti, where the final i as been added because Japanese syllablescannot end in t. In compounds, the i can drop out, so nichi-hon (*hi-moto in the unused pure Japanesereading) becomes nit-hon. At that point different things can happen. The t can be lost in assimilation to the hgetting us Nihon, OR the h can revert to its original p, with the t getting assimilated and doubled with it,getting us Nippon.

Another example concerns the present capital of Japan. The Míngcapitals of China were Nánjing (Nanking) and then Beijing (Peking),which simply mean, respectively, "Southern Capital" and "NorthernCapital." The capital of Japan from 794 to 1868 was Kyôto, which

meant "Capital District." Then the capital was moved to Edo, whichwas renamed the "Eastern Capital." In Chinese that would be

Dongjing. In Japanese, however, that is pronounced Tôkyô. In Vietnamese it is Ðông-Kinh (or Tonkin). The Vietnamese version preserves more of the Chinese consonants, but

both Japanese and Vietnamese versions reveal that "capital" originally started with a k ,which has become palatalized (to a j) in Mandarin. The k is also preserved in earlymodern Western versions of Chinese words, like "Nanking" and "Peking" themselves.

Chinese departments in colleges sometimes expect students to learn Mandarin eventhough they only want to read Classical Chinese or Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, or Sino-Japanese. Thisimposes a vast unnecessary burden on them, but even teachers and scholars of Chinese sometimes have





trouble accepting that the ancient language is not the modern one and that the ancient language is part of thecivilization of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan as much as of modern China. It is as though students of Latin weretold they would have to learn Italian as well.

Once when Confucius was passing near the foot of Mount Tai in a chariot, there was a married womanweeping at a grave mound, and dolorously too. Confucius politely rested his hands on the front rail of thechariot and listened to her weeping. He sent Zilu (Tzu-lu) to inquire of her, saying; "From the sound of your weeping, it seems that you indeed have many troubles."

Classical Chinese:

Mandarin Translation:

Then the woman said; "It is true. My father-in-law died in a tiger's jaw; my husband also died there. Now, myson has also died there." Confucius said, "Why do you not leave this place?" The woman said: "Here there isno harsh and oppressive government."

Classical Chinese:




Classical Chinese:



Confucius said, "Young men, take

note of this: a harsh and oppressivegovernment is more ferocious andfearsome than even a tiger."


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