Re: Mandarin-Min sound chart?

* Lee Sau Dan wrote:

"Oliver" == Oliver Cromm <lispamateur@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Oliver> Does anybody know of similar charts for other Chinese
Oliver> languages/dialects, especially including ones from the Min
Oliver> group (Xiamen, Taiwanese)?

Find a book on Chinese dialectology. :)

Apparently, I have to ...

Oliver> The occasion for this question is that doubt arose about
Oliver> the cognateness of the roots "cha" and "te", from which
Oliver> supposedly most of the world's languages got their words
Oliver> for "tea".

They are cognates.

Many words with Mandarin <ch-> map to South-Min <t->. E.g.

[...]

For the correspondence between <a> and <e>, sorry, I cannot name other
examples. I'm not that familiar with South-Min, indeed.

I'm not too surprised about ch <-> t, because they regularly alternate
in Japanese as well, due to borrowings from different places or times.
But there, "TEI" normally alternates with "CHÔ". And for tea, in modern
Japanese there is "CHA" and "SA", nothing with "T".

A third element, which you seem to have ignored, is the tone systems.

That happens easily if you're not familiar with tone languages. I really
don't know any Chinese. Thanks for the addition.

So, it's clear that <cha> and <te> are cognates.


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