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> The Chinese pronunciations have changed. Some researchers have been known to use Korean pronunciations of words to help triangulate to what ancient Chinese ch

> The Chinese pronunciations have changed. Some researchers have been known to use Korean pronunciations of words to help triangulate to what ancient Chinese characters would sound like (in combination with poems where you know what rhymes to expect etc)! Modern Korean isn’t a tonal language tho, the length of the vowel changes the meaning. So how does that work?

naniwaduni 6y ago
Modern Korean alone definitely isn't sufficient to reconstruct from, but including it in an analysis can add some information that isn't preserved in other branches.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Chinese itself wasn’t much of a tonal language until a little more than one thousand years ago. Modern Chinese tones emerged in the Middle Chinese era as a way to avoid homophony/preserve distinctions of meaning as a lot of old final consonants were lost.
stanrivers 6y ago
Korean does not have vowel length change the meaning, however Japanese does. Korean used to be tonal, and you are right it now longer is. Korean is used in combination with other data points to determine pronunciations. This works for old English plays, for example too. You can use poems that should rhyme, plus commentary from linguists at the time, to guess what certain words would sound like “back then”. Just saying that Korean is another super rare but fun random fact that I have heard of being used at least once in combination with ancient Chinese poems, to guess at the old Chinese pronunciation.
- philliphaydon 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology > In 2012, vowel length is reported almost completely neutralized in Korean, except for a very few older speakers of Seoul dialect,[14] for whom the distinctive vowel-length distinction is maintained only in the first syllable of a word.[13] So it does have vowel length change meaning but it’s almost kinda died out like tones?
  - yongjik 6y ago
    Native Korean speaker here, born in the 70s and grew up in Seoul. We all learned a dozen short-long pairs at school (like 눈 nun being either eye or snow), and of course the education got all of us tricked into thinking that we're making these distinctions (if only we try hard enough). But looking at it objectively, I don't think a single person around me used vowel length distinction. If you have to "think" whether a word is long or short, that means the distinction is dead. No English speaker has to "think" whether fan or pan is the correct word. An actual sound distinction comes automatically for native speakers. Similarly, ㅐ/ㅔ ("ae"/"e") distinction was dead before I was born, but schools insisted that they're well and alive. Not sure what they're teaching these days.
    - philliphaydon 6y ago
      I can't speak Korean, only a little bit of Mandarin :D so I'm really happy to have your reply, thank you! Makes sense!
- devonkim 6y ago
  Vowel lengthening matters in Korean technically but is more often context-sensitive than length sensitive like it regularly is in Japanese for reasons I don’t know. 눈 can mean snow or eye in Korean depending upon how long you extend the vowel as recently as 1970, for example, but many Koreans (especially younger Koreans) have less sensitivity and don’t use it. When I learned Japanese there were more words where it was easier to confuse them and thus require a distinction, probably preserving length. Overall Korean historically has had a tendency toward reducing tones and sounds (it used to have f and z sounds like in Chinese, for example). It continues to eliminate vowels where a lot of Koreans are not pronouncing the sound 최 fully and eliminating lip rounding to make it simply 체.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    > When I learned Japanese there were more words where it was easier to confuse them and thus require a distinction, probably preserving length. I did this to unintentional comedic effect the other day by referring to 「星の王子さま」as「星のおじいさま」.

naniwaduni 6y ago

Modern Korean alone definitely isn't sufficient to reconstruct from, but including it in an analysis can add some information that isn't preserved in other branches.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

Chinese itself wasn’t much of a tonal language until a little more than one thousand years ago. Modern Chinese tones emerged in the Middle Chinese era as a way to avoid homophony/preserve distinctions of meaning as a lot of old final consonants were lost.

stanrivers 6y ago

Korean does not have vowel length change the meaning, however Japanese does. Korean used to be tonal, and you are right it now longer is. Korean is used in combination with other data points to determine pronunciations. This works for old English plays, for example too. You can use poems that should rhyme, plus commentary from linguists at the time, to guess what certain words would sound like “back then”. Just saying that Korean is another super rare but fun random fact that I have heard of being used at least once in combination with ancient Chinese poems, to guess at the old Chinese pronunciation.

philliphaydon 6y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology > In 2012, vowel length is reported almost completely neutralized in Korean, except for a very few older speakers of Seoul dialect,[14] for whom the distinctive vowel-length distinction is maintained only in the first syllable of a word.[13] So it does have vowel length change meaning but it’s almost kinda died out like tones?
- yongjik 6y ago
  Native Korean speaker here, born in the 70s and grew up in Seoul. We all learned a dozen short-long pairs at school (like 눈 nun being either eye or snow), and of course the education got all of us tricked into thinking that we're making these distinctions (if only we try hard enough). But looking at it objectively, I don't think a single person around me used vowel length distinction. If you have to "think" whether a word is long or short, that means the distinction is dead. No English speaker has to "think" whether fan or pan is the correct word. An actual sound distinction comes automatically for native speakers. Similarly, ㅐ/ㅔ ("ae"/"e") distinction was dead before I was born, but schools insisted that they're well and alive. Not sure what they're teaching these days.
  - philliphaydon 6y ago
    I can't speak Korean, only a little bit of Mandarin :D so I'm really happy to have your reply, thank you! Makes sense!
devonkim 6y ago
Vowel lengthening matters in Korean technically but is more often context-sensitive than length sensitive like it regularly is in Japanese for reasons I don’t know. 눈 can mean snow or eye in Korean depending upon how long you extend the vowel as recently as 1970, for example, but many Koreans (especially younger Koreans) have less sensitivity and don’t use it. When I learned Japanese there were more words where it was easier to confuse them and thus require a distinction, probably preserving length. Overall Korean historically has had a tendency toward reducing tones and sounds (it used to have f and z sounds like in Chinese, for example). It continues to eliminate vowels where a lot of Koreans are not pronouncing the sound 최 fully and eliminating lip rounding to make it simply 체.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  > When I learned Japanese there were more words where it was easier to confuse them and thus require a distinction, probably preserving length. I did this to unintentional comedic effect the other day by referring to 「星の王子さま」as「星のおじいさま」.