Fanqie

In Chinese phonology, fanqie (Chinese: 反切; pinyin: fǎnqiè; lit. "reverse-cutting") is a method to indicate the pronunciation of a character by using two other characters.

The Origin

Before fanqie was widely adopted, method of du ruo (讀若, "read as") was used in works such as Erya (3rd century AD)^[1]. Introduction of Buddhism in China around the first century brought Sanskrit. Its phonetic knowledge might have inspired the idea of fanqie^{[1] [2]}

Sun Yan (孫炎) is generally considered to be the first to adopt fanqie in Erya Yinyi (爾雅音義, "Sounds and Meanings of Erya"). He was a man in Wei state during the period of Three Kingdoms (220–280 AD). ^{[1] [3]}.

In the original fanqie, a character's pronunciation is represented by two other characters. The initial consonant is represented by that of the first of the two characters (上字 "upper word", as Chinese was written vertically); the final (or the "rime", including the medial glide, the nuclear vowel and the coda) and the tone are represented by those of the second of the two characters (下字, "lower word").^{[1] [2] [3]}. The representation of tone notably changed later.

In 601 AD during the Sui Dynasty, Qieyun (切韻, "Cutting Rimes"), a Chinese rime dictionary using fanqie was published^{[1] [2] [3]}.

Modern form

In Middle Chinese, the tone was represented by the rime character. However, owing to sound changes that have occurred since then, a more complicated rule is used today (see tone name for background information):

1. The yin-yang (陰陽) classification, which arose in some tones due to voicing distinctions in the onset, is determined by the onset character.
2. The ping-shang-qu-ru (平上去入) classification, which is kept from Middle Chinese, is determined by the rime character.

Thus

(Onset & Tone-1) + (Rime & Tone-2) = (Pronunciation of Character)

For example, the character 東 is represented by 德紅切. The third character 切 indicates that this is a fanqie spelling, while the first two characters indicate the onset and rime respectively. Thus the pronunciation of 東 is given as the onset of 德 dé (d) with the rime of 紅 hóng (ong), yielding dong. Also, 德 has a yin ru tone and 紅 has a yang ping tone. (In Modern Mandarin, 德 has a yang ping tone, but tonal developments in Mandarin are somewhat complex and therefore yield irregular results.) So the tone of 東 is yin ping.

Gari Ledyard has given this informative example of how an English equivalent to fanqie might look:

To show the pronunciation of an unknown character, one "cut" the initial consonant from a second character and the rime from a third, and combined them to show the reading of the first. To use an English example, one could indicate the pronunciation of the word sough by "cutting" sun and now (= sow), or "cut" sun and cuff (= suff) to show the alternate pronunciation. This method was a bit circular in that it required knowledge of the pronunciations of the characters that were "cut," but it proved to be a workable system and lasted well into the twentieth century.

Language change

Owing to the development of the Chinese language over the last millennium and a half, the fanqie spellings are not always accurate for northern languages of Modern Chinese; for example, the modern pronunciation of 德 is in a yang tone. However, it is still rather accurate for southern Chinese spoken variants such as Cantonese and Hakka, which have preserved many elements of Ancient and Middle Chinese.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} G. Casacchia (2006). "Chinese Linguistic Tradition". Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics. Second Edition. London: Elsevier.
2. ^ ^{a b c} W. S.-Y. Wang and R. E. Asher (1994). "Chinese Linguistic Tradition". The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
3. ^ ^{a b c} 竺家寧。《聲韻學》。台北：五南圖書。1990。[in Traditional Chinese] [This book pointed out that fanqie's use appeared as early as Eastern Han]

• Gari Ledyard: "The international linguistic background of The correct sounds for the instruction of the people" in The Korean alphabet : its history and structure, edited by Young-Key Kim-Renaud; Univ. of Hawai'i Press, cop. 1997, ISBN 0-8248-1723-0 (bd.) ISBN 0-8248-1989-6 (pb.) .

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