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I didn't know it was pronounced dang in Shanghainese! Thank you ^^

I'll add it to the list!

旭 xu1 is an ancient character, composed of "sun" semantic plus "nine" (jiu3) phonetic (though even in OC the phonetic is kinda wonky 九 is reconstructed as *ku' and 旭 is reconstructed as *qhwog. Like, you gotta say it a few times to even sorta get it). Meanwhile, 旮 and 旯 are only used in the word 旮旯 which is unattested in OC and MC lit. so probably a recent dialectal word, derived from or related to 角落, 角 used to have a g- or k- initial (*krog or *grog) so that's probaby where the reading "ga1" comes from, and "la2" is pretty close to luo4. No idea why the characters look like that tho. Vibes?

Language/sinology side of YT, I admit it gets pretty weird in these parts. But we got tea and obscure jokes so won't you stay a while and listen? =P

你好在中国方的世界。

I mean.... *gestures vaguely to all the messed up shit that happened in ancient China* Li'l Jiang was spitting facts tho.

I wasn't aware the phenomenon had a name but I'm not surprised if it does, sadly I am, as I said, unaware of it ^^;; What I AM aware of, is several other characters that were pretty much streamlined into obfuscation, so more of those coming down the line!

@@SwedishSinologyNerd I think it’s just called lìbiàn, 隶变… Whereby semantic clarity is sacrificed for the sake of ease of writing. I believe it happened during the gradual transition between 篆字 and 隶书… Weren’t the earliest forms of 隶书 actually a cursive, handwritten version of 篆字, which was relegated to formal contexts? (I’m probably oversimplifying it here…) So when 篆字 stopped being used, their semantic depth was also forever replaced with the more “brushstrokable” (albeit unrecognisable) forms of later styles. For example, 射 was initially super pictographic-a bow and arrow pointing left and a hand holding it… This otherwise unattested 🏹 shape was then replaced with 身 in the newer, more stylistically “regulated” way of writing. And, by the way, I’m a huge fan of 隶定, which takes old 篆字 and 甲骨文 and converts their components into modern-day styles (楷书 as well as typefaces like 明体)… Wikipedia uses the example of 春 (the product of 隶变), which is rendered in lìdìng as 萅. One of my favourite pastimes is to look at 甲骨文 inscriptions and see the archaic characters being rendered into modern-day kǎitǐ fonts… Some of them look super complex!!

I don't think Turkic is very strongly , or at all, represented in Chinese vocabulary. The Chinese were pretty snobbish from the Qin unification onward so loanwords were rather limited, though before that there seem to have been a lot of cross-influence with AustroAsiatic. From the Han onward it's mostly Sanskrit, with a bit of Mongolian and Manchu that makes it into the vocabulary.

@@SwedishSinologyNerd Hahaha I wasn’t entertaining the idea of loanwords at all! Just poking some fun at internet pan-Turkic fans who link everything to Turkish, the mother of all languages in the world!

I mean.... never too late to start? :)

Aw geez man, spoiler alert! xD

@@SwedishSinologyNerd I still learned something today 🙋 didn't know the non -ng form was from confusion with another word

The lazy writers bit was mostly intended as a joke, however I think it's safe to assume, since 打 is frequently refered to as a "vulgar" character 俗字 of both 朾 and 撻 that is was a common short-hand used in informal writing (it is rare in histories and memorials but common in plays, poetry and novels) that it was just an "easier" way to write the word regardless of the pronunciation. If it was due to a lack of knowledge, I don't think we'd have so many commentators decrying how people were using the character "wrong".

You can't be serious, I sound anemic AF, like a dusty old Oxbridge professor with one foot in the grave droning on and on inside an equally dusty lecture room xD If you like monstrous characters, the ones used to transcribe Sanskrit are pretty out there as well. Also Chu Nom characters, those things get pretty cray-cray like the character black, (one version of) which is 黑 on top of 顛. It's absolute anarchy and I love it.

@@SwedishSinologyNerd I’m serious… Your harshest critic is always going to be yourself :) I liked this video as well as the 地 one. Will soon keep watching! Lol, 黑 on top of 颠… I wish it was encoded by Unicode so bad just to see what it would look like here in the comments (I’m using my phone)… Probably just one thick white square (I’m using dark mode)…

Well golly gee willikers, that suits me like hand in glove cause y'see, I happen to be both outdated AND strange xD

@@SwedishSinologyNerd Come on... I'm interested from a linguistic point of view: where did you learn english? Edit: btw I just found your content and am binge watching all of it

@@rawcopper604 I mean, I learned it in Sweden when I went to school, then I added various idiosyncrasies over time due to my reading and viewing habits. It doesn't help that I'm quite interested in reconstructed pronunciation (that is, of how Shakespear's plays were likely actually spoken) as well as Anglish. I should add my teachers had both Bri'ish and 'Murican accents so that along with my Swedish accent probably does a number on the way I articulate words...

I actually want to make a video "deboonking" some common myths about Chinese script held even by Chinese, chief among them is the linear view that for example often assume that Hanzi were somehow invented for writing on turtle shells (when all evidence points to a wealth of bamboo/wood slip literature that has tragically rotted away over thousands of years). Heck, even many simplified forms were invented centuries and sometimes millenia before the script reform... It is entirely possible that Chu forms influenced later forms, because many forms conventionally labeled as "Chu" were often used in several states, only we have much less evidence from them. Research has also shown that the Qin standardization was (pirate voice) "moar guidelines than actual rules", at best only enforced in the state buearocracy, which is why Xu Shen could collect so many WArring States characters even 400 years later, they survived on the grassroots level. Also, I'm glad you like the vids! Maybe not binge the earliest videos cause they're quite atrocious ^^; I plan on remaking at least the heaven and earth vids sometime in the future...

@@SwedishSinologyNerd When I went to a museum in Gansu, I was told about 隶变 and everything, which was so interesting as it proves that the Chinese script evolved more gradually. A breath of fresh air, considering that I’ve heard from some Chinese people that 隶书 was invented by a single man (I think there’s a story like that). And probably the fact that thinking in terms of drastic breaks is often far from the truth can be applied to Chu vs. Qin Shuhuang characters too. Our collective imaginary has led us to think that book-burning has wiped out all other forms of Chinese writing, but language writing and habits often manage to slip through top-down imposition. I’ll watch your old videos first then! And then get to the more recent ones, so that instead of noticing a drop in quality I’ll witness an increase instead (but I’m sure they’re very high quality from the very first one, and anyway I’m here to learn!).

@@ChristianJiang Dang, I need to try go to that museum, sounds interesting! I think the Chinese have a strong love of.... what's the best word? "Lionized history" maybe? That is they often approach history not necessarilyin a factual way but what is "true". So they will attribute inventions to a single person even though the actual chain of events may have been much more complicated, because it makes history tidy and orderly, and also makes for a good story. Like Cang Jie inventing writing: the minister Cang Jie was ordered to create writing by the Son of Heaven, and went out into the world, and when he saw the footprints of a Qilin he got the idea of using symbols to represent words because the Qilin's footprints were unique to it and could serve as a symbolic representation of the creature itself.

@@SwedishSinologyNerd Oh yeah, I know that story! Somehow one person created the entirety of the writing system lol, but I’ll cut them some slack coz that’s an origin myth, and many cultures have them… A similar phenomenon was by me witnessed at the very same museum in Gansu I mentioned in the previous comment. Basically taking ancient history and projecting it onto modern national concepts. They use many fancy nouns to describe ancient China and modern China, but why are these features (and not others) embodied by some ruins in the desert?? Mystery… An extract from one of the descriptions in the museum: “Vestiges of the past remain on the two passes, and the Great Wall remains vigilant and vigorous. The passes and the Great Wall represent the essential spirit of diligence, wisdom, bravery, tenacity, inclusiveness and confidence within the Chinese chizen. These historical monuments embody the Chinese people’s patriotism and devotion to peace, harmony unity and self-improvement, along with the strong force of vitality, cohesion and creativity. These rational characters and nationalist spirit have pushed for the history of the Chinese nation and the Chinese civilization and also become the force behind the great rejuvenation of the Chinese dream.”

訓讀 "semantic reading" or "gloss reading" aren't as common in Chinese as in, say, J/K/V, but they are quite common, esp. in "dialects" which have a lot of "non-standard" character use/readings, the opaqueness often arises from a more common character being used to write an unrelated but semantically similar/identical local word. This is why I consider Chinese-script languages to have an "extra dimension" or layer of meaning because the characters can often be played with a little fast and lose to produce aditional/deeper meaning. The Japanese are experts at this but at least traditionally the Chinese or Vietnamese are no slouches (I know too little of Korean to make an assesment but I suspect the case to be quite similar there).

@@SwedishSinologyNerd Woah, thanks for explaining that! The dialect my dad speaks (瑞安话) has a lot of tailored characters, like 眥 instead of 看, as it’s pronounced [tsʰɿ˥˨] (transcription blatantly copy-pasted from Wikipedia). Maybe they’ll do some semantic parsing when reading stuff in Mandarin and converting it into their dialect, so for instance by saying 箸 [dzei˨] when seeing 筷子. I’m not sure whether this happens in real life though, and unfortunately I don’t speak 瑞安话 (so sad) and can’t know for sure how everyday use of the language functions ☹️ And, ofc, I’m not well-versed in Chinese word etymologies to be able to tell whether a character is 训读 or not! PS: Maybe the word “two” in the Rui’an dialect could be 训读? It’s pronounced like “la”, which makes me think of a closer etymological link to 两, but I guess it’s written as 二, although I’m not really sure coz these dialects aren’t often written down anyway. P-PS: The Chinese sometimes have this infuriating habit of equating words to their respective characters. They’re seen as indivisible and when you ask about the etymology of a word they start showing the character itself. 训读 makes the difference between the two more nuanced, as they don’t always overlap. I guess the Japanese don’t have the same issue!

@@ChristianJiang Yeah the Chinese tend to see the word and character as indivisible (I blame Mr Kong and his "name correcting" for that one). Afaik it's only in the 20th century that linguists have seriously started to separate the character-etymology and word-etymologies. "la" could very well be a dialect for of 二, because the OC word had an initial n- which may have turned into an l- somewhere along the lines (I think we all know that many asiatic languages have trouble keeping their n's and l's apart), and strange things happen to vowels in regional speech so the "a" doesn't seem too out of place either (for reference, some versions of Hokkien have the readings "lu", "li" or "no" all cognate with the standard "er4").

Well, the OC reading of 夜 is reconstructed as *la:gs, entering tones are derived from final stops in OC-MC (usually -k, -p, -t) while final -s (almost) always results in a 4 tone in modern mandarin. Many words using 夜 as phonetic lack the final -s and are reconstructed as *la:g, so what seems to have happened is that the final -g in these words turned into final -k in MC, while the final -s in *la:gs made the stop disappear altogether so it became analyzed as a departing tone. Because MM doesn't have entering tones anymore, the words with 夜 as phonetic probably landed a 4th tone by association (though others, notably 掖 show more variation). Hope this helps!

@@SwedishSinologyNerdfei chang gan xie

Like any self-respecting Chinese scholar, I “borrow” from the great works of yore to elevate my own meagre talent xD

Well…. Probably? I don’t think the timeframes quite line up (and Schuessler seeing AA words under every bed and in dark closets have made me wary of jumping on the “easy” explanation. Like how people always want to link NorthEast Mandarin dialect words with Manchu). The human mouth can only produce so many unique sounds, sometimes coincidences are just that.

I sometimes joke when I hear Chinese argue which is the “purest” (closest to Old Chinese) variety of Chinese, and tell them it’s Vietnamese cause Viet preserves a surprising amount of OC-MC phonology xD

​@@SwedishSinologyNerdViet also borrowed from OC as well as MC e.g. the word 床 (OC *k.drzaŋ) as *k.ɟəːŋ in Proto Vietic which evolved into modern Vietnamese giường /zɨəŋ˨˩~jɨəŋ˨˩/, but there was also another loan from MC dzryang (/ɖʐjaŋ˧/?) which became modern Viet sàng /saːŋ˨˩/. Interestingly the OC borrowing is much more common in Vietnamese and I only learnt about sàng as an alternative word by researching Chinese evolution & loans

Roger wilco! =)

plz do all characters

@@SwedishSinologyNerd So a similar mystery - why does 洗 have the phonetic 先? To compound this, Japanese has the reading SEN for this character while Korean has sye…

@@spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace ALL characters? Bro I'll need to ACTUALLY live longer than the Southern Mountains to manage that in one lifetime xD

@@jogloran Great question! And a good topic for a future video. Off the top of my hat, Duan Yucai claims the modern use of 洗 is another 訓讀 (semantic reading) that replaced earlier 洒 "to wash" which is now used for 灑 "to sprinkle". The old reading of 洗 (which then meant "to wash the feet") is xian3 which fits better with K/J (probably borrowed during the middle ages). I'd need to delve into the actual phonetics of the three and consult the STEDT before I can say anything definitively though.

Probably due to the pronunciation being borrowed from Middle Chinese before the change took place. I mostly brought up Vietnamese because K “jeong” and J “chou” while derived from the OG reading are not as eye-catchingly similar as đánh

That was very interesting, thank you! 🙏

也許吧， 不過我依然對自己發音不自信，怕露怯😂 說不定未來會有一些雙語言內容，譬如「瑞漢宅男讀解笑林廣記」這種視頻。 不吝如何，多蒙您的支持🙏

@@SwedishSinologyNerd 哥们还读过笑林广记，厉害啊

@@SwedishSinologyNerd 看完视频，博主引经据典，很有深度。真心佩服你的汉语能力，请问你是在什么地方学的（研究的）汉语？

@@menganlei9378 過獎了，焉敢焉敢！我主要在北京讀的書，不過專業是中醫針灸，漢學才是不寧的愛好而已 哈哈

@@menganlei9378 豈敢，俺注意力太差，所以像笑林、聊齋、子不語等這種短小説選集對我來説較合適

Thank you! It’s viewers like you who are underrated =) as for the way I pronounce the “placeholder initial” w-, I swear I hear Chinese people fluctuate between a hard and soft w-sound so I simply try to emulate it (tho my pronunciation is passable at best).

Oh fiddlesticks I forgot to add it to the Music list! D= Here you go: Dxrk ダーク - RAVE (Official Audio) - th-cam.com/video/PTZgxW_3LIQ/w-d-xo.html Took me a while to find it myself, it's a real banger tho innit?

Lol, I know that (one of) the origins of 丁 is a city wall, though it can also be nail and square, since the OB glyph is so simple there probably was a lot of semantic overlap even at the earliest stages. In the BI and excavated bamboo scrolls it tends to assume the shape of an inverted triangle which is probably why it ended up in a T shape in the Standard Script. I'll go more into detail on 丁 (and its derivatives!) when I tackle the Stems and Branches =)

@@SwedishSinologyNerd Ooooo, I look forward to that! Imagine being so lazy with what you want to convey you just end up drawing a circle/square and be like "Yup, now that's what I call a character. I'm done for the day!"

​@@justaregularslitherwingBack in Primary school, a teacher got really upset with one of the students for merging the second and third strokes of 口 by writing the last stroke from right to left and threw his homework as she was marking it onto the floor.

You’re much too kind! And preempting questions is part of being a teacher xD (also answering the questions I had way back when in case someone else has the same question)

Thank you! More to come so stay tuned =)

Rg6!