kanjijump

The Kanjijump Middle Chinese notation

Kanjijump uses a new system for representing the sounds of Middle Chinese. I initially intended to use an existing reconstruction or transcription system, and I spent a good few days trying to settle on the right one. While each system I came across seemed to have its merits, in the end, none of them were suited for the purposes of a Japanese-learning resource like Kanjijump.

The Kanjijump notation for Middle Chinese was created for lack of any existing notation for writing down Middle Chinese sounds which:

• doesn't use lots of symbols unfamiliar to specialists, or unwieldy combinations of familiar letters. A transcription should look at least vaguely pronounceable to an English speaker at first glance. (E.g. things like <gh ś> which subjectively look closer to English than things like <ɦ ɕ>.)
• stays close to Romanized on'yomi, where practical, so as to illuminate the patterns by which Japanese speakers adapted foreign sounds, as well as the regular sound changes which led to the current form of the on'yomi. (E.g. things like <tš š> which subjectively look closer to the corresponding letters in Romanized Japanese <s s>, instead of <ch sh>, which look closer to English.)
• captures just enough of the known sound distinctions of Middle Chinese so that the learner could potentially infer the modern readings in Japanese, and perhaps occasionally other languages like Mandarin.
• Makes it easy to appreciate rhyme in transcribed classical Chinese poetry.

I'm sure any professional linguist reading this is cringing already. If it makes you feel any better, please feel free to call this work a constructed language vaguely based on Middle Chinese instead of an actual representation of Middle Chinese sounds. Either way, it doesn't hinder my purpose here, which is to help people understand the Japanese script.

Taking a cue from David Prager Branner's transcription system, which uses the 攝 shè rhyme classes as its backbone, I looked into another important set of rhymes, the 平水韻 Píngshǔi Yùn, and I found that a system which preserves at least the final distinctions of the 平水韻 Píngshǔi Yùn could go pretty far in satisfying that third criterion.

With this restriction in mind, I chose Wang Li's reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology and Polyhedron's transcription system as a jumping-off point, i.e. for choosing what symbols to use for which initials/finals. This decision was pretty much arbitrary, having mostly to do with their free availability on the internet. After iterating over different combinations of symbols from these systems, and making adjustments with the above criteria in mind, I settled on the following:

Initials

The digraphs and trigraphs etc. follow some patterns. The acute accent marks palatal articulation, and doubled letters mark non-aspirated stops and affricates. The <h> is used in various digraphs, but not to mark aspiration, so as to keep the values of all digraphs etc. mostly unsuprising for English speakers with no training.

The digraphs <nj> and <mv> were chosen despite their unfamiliarity because they make it easy to illustrate relations between varying on'yomi of kanji like 人 and 物.

Distinctions between 初 <tš> and 昌 <tś>, etc. are preserved in case I (or anyone else does) find a use for this system involving another language of the Sinosphere where these distinctions have been preserved in modern readings. Other distinctions were ignored because the cost in terms of subjective readability for English-speaking learners of Japanese was deemed too high.

Since the initials <tṭ ṭ ḍ> are in mostly complementary distribution with <tt t d>, the former are often written without the dot--specifically, before medials <i ü> and before <ă>. Elsewhere, the dot is kept, but it is only contrastive before the final <i>.

Finals by 攝 shè and 平水韻 Píngshǔi Yùn categories

Only rhyme names for the 平 level tone are given, except where the rhyme has no level tone exemplars. In a few cases one 平水 Píngshǔi rhyme has multiple finals, as the Japanese on'yomi for these rhymes reflect distinctions not made in 平水韻 Píngshǔi Yùn. The 廣韻 Guǎngyùn rhymes are given for these finals underneath the 平水 Píngshǔi rhyme.

*The Pingshui rhyme 元 is listed twice because its corresponding 廣韻 Guǎngyùn rhymes are split between two 攝 shè.

The letter <i> marks 三等, and leading <u> marks 合口. When a final has both contrastive 三等 and contrastive 合口, it is marked with <ü>. The only 合口 finals not marked by <u> are <ăng ăk>.

The initials <f ph v mv> appear only before 三等 合口 finals, and so the medials <ü i> are omitted from syllables beginning with those initials, producing the likes of <fan> rather than <füan>, <mvun> rather than <miun>, <fî> rather than <fui>.

Likewise, syllables starting with <y ʽy> appear only with 三等 finals, so any mark of 三等 in these syllables are omitted, producing the likes of <ya> rather than <yia>, <yuei> rather than <yüei>, etc. As a special case, when is <ʽy> before 合口 finals, the <y> is omitted as well, producing<ʽun> rather than <ʽyun> or <ʽyiun>, <ʽu> rather than <ʽyu> or <ʽyiu>, etc.

Finals in 二等 are marked by a leading <ă> or <uă>. Finals with leading <iă üă> are in 三等, but the presence of <ă> indicates that they rhyme with certain syllables according to the 廣韻 Guǎngyùn scheme.