Teochew literary reading (1) - Teochew sounds like Korean?!
In this YouTube video, a Korean speaker and a native Teochew speaker (who also speaks Korean) discuss some words that sound very similar in Korean and Teochew.
Examples from the video, with Teochew (Pêng’im), Korean (Revised romanization), and Mandarin (Hanyu Pinyin) pronunciations:
- 可樂 • ko6lag8 • kholla • kĕlè
- 南大門 • nam5 doa7mung5 • nam daemun • nán dàmén
- 郵票 • iu5pio3 • upyo • yóupiào
- 學生 • hak8sêng1 • haksaeng • xuéshēng
- 韓國 • hang5gog4 • Han-guk • Hángúo
- 門 • mung5 • mun • mén
- 男 • nam5 • nam • nán
It is well known that Korean language and culture have been historically influenced by the Chinese, so it is no surprise that Korean has many loanwords from Chinese. But Korea and Teochew are not very close if you look on the map - almost the whole “bulk” of China lies in between. It’s not just Teochew, either: in this video you can hear a Taiwanese speaker point out similarities between Korean and Taiwanese Hokkien. So why do these Korean pronunciations of Chinese loanwords sound more like Teochew (or Southern Min, or Cantonese…) than Mandarin?
In terms of pronunciation, I can identify at least two features that Korean and Teochew share, but which Mandarin does not have.
- Retain -m / -k / -p endings
- k- initials that have turned to j- in Mandarin (e.g. 己、禁)
In the comments to the first video, “Benny Chin” left a comment with even more examples (the phonetic spelling looks like it is supposed to represent the Korean pronunciation, but is also very close to the Teochew pronunciation.)
There are so many more: bang (room) 房, hok shi (maybe) 或是, li yiu (reason) 理由, ki wher (chance) 機會, kin chang(excited) 緊張, ah jik (uncle) 阿叔, yong ki (courage) 勇氣, gong ju (princess, in korean it is ong ju) 公主; chia jun bi (prepare the car) 車準備, hor (good) 好, jip jong (concentrate, focus) 集中, hwan dan (ridiculous) 荒塘, bu ki (weapon) 武器, shin bun(news) 新聞, eun (silver) 銀, ak dok(sinister) 惡毒, sit chong (disappeared) 失蹤, liang sim (conscience) 良心, gook ki (funny) 滑稽, mai (don’t) ?, gam bang (prison cell) 監房, sim mun (interrogate) 審問, ju yeoh (main) 主要, li hwoon (divorce) 離婚, wui gi (crisis) 危機, shim boo (bride, daughter in law) 新婦….
The reason for the similarity between Korean and Teochew lies in when these words were borrowed from Chinese. Korean borrowed many words from Chinese directly, especially after the Koreans adopted the Chinese-style civil service examination system in the 900s. They didn’t just borrow single words, but also the entire written language of literary Chinese, which was used as a sort of lingua franca in East Asia.
The Korean pronunciation of Chinese (“Sino-Korean”) therefore acted like a time capsule, preserving many features of how Chinese sounded to Koreans in that era. In China, however, the language and pronunciation continued to evolve, and different Chinese “dialects” also diverged from each other. The traditional Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese pronunciations of literary Chinese (so-called Sino-xenic pronunciations) are a useful source of information for reconstructing what Chinese sounded like in the past, because the time when these cultures adopted literary Chinese can be approximately dated from historical records.
What does this have to do with Teochew? In a sense, Teochew (and other Min languages) are like Korean, because it has multiple layers of borrowings from “mainstream” Chinese, as well as other non-Chinese languages.
The short answer is that Teochew (and other southern “dialects”) preserve many features of medieval Chinese that have been lost in Mandarin, and the Chinese that the Koreans borrowed also happened to be medieval Chinese. Both have been relatively conservative compared to Mandarin, so it is not surprising that our ears quickly pick up on their similarities!
Another interesting point is that many of the words that sounds similar in Korean and Teochew actually also have two different pronunciations in Teochew: so-called colloquial vs. literary pronunciation (文白異讀 bhung5bêh8-i6tag8), and it is often the literary pronunciation that is similar to Korean.
In our next posts in this series, we’ll look into the phenomenon of colloquial vs. literary pronunciation in Teochew, and why it can be so hard to write Teochew with Chinese characters!
Posted on 2021-04-23 00:00:00 +0000