Another mispronunciation by the Chinese president? Bilu or Milu for Peru

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Xi Jinping is celebrated as the first national leader of the People's Republic of China who speaks Modern Standard (MSM) rather than some heavily accented Sinitic dialect / topolect.  That is basically true, though he slurs and swallows his words, and is (in)famous for his numerous verbal gaffes (see "Selected readings" below).  Now the pseudoscience and fraud muckraker Fang Shimin / Fang Zhouzi has pointed out another alleged language error perpetrated by President / Chairman / Party Secretary of the CCP while he has been at the APEC meeting in Peru the last few days.

Xí zhǔxí fǎngwènle sāncì Bìlǔ, háishì jiānchí bǎ “Bìlǔ” shuō chéng "Mìlǔ", yǐhòu “Bìlǔ” de dúyīn yě yào gǎile ma? Yāngshì hái tíxǐngguò Xí zhǔxí yào zěnme dú “Bìlǔ”, tài dàdǎnle"

习主席访问了三次秘鲁,还是坚持把“秘鲁”说成密鲁,以后“秘鲁”的读音也要改了吗?央视还提醒过习主席要怎么读“秘鲁”,太大胆了。

"President Xi has visited Peru three times, but still insists on referring to 'Peru' as 'Miru'. Will the pronunciation of 'Peru' also be changed in the future? CCTV (China Central Television) also reminded President Xi how to pronounce 'Peru', which was too bold."

(GT)

The problem is that "Bìlǔ" and "Mìlǔ" are both widely used in Mandarin for 秘鲁, especially the latter by older folks and by individuals who speak topolects and dialects, although I think that language authorities in education, the media, etc. are trying to make "Bìlǔ" the official standard.

The same interchange between initial bilabials "b-" and "m-" is evident in variant pronunciations of the Mandarin word for "secretary", where we find 秘書 (also written as 祕書) being pronounced as "mìshū" (with a voiced bilabial nasal) in MSM, but with "bìshū" (voiceless bilabial plosive) as a common variant in non-Mandarin dialects and topolects

 

Selected readings

[Thanks to shaing tai]



7 Comments

  1. Thomas said,

    November 20, 2024 @ 5:29 am

    I'm sure that soon milu will be the standard.

  2. Chris Button said,

    November 20, 2024 @ 7:55 am

    The problem is that "Bìlǔ" and "Mìlǔ" are both widely used in Mandarin for 秘鲁, especially the latter by older folks and by individuals who speak topolects and dialects …

    The same interchange between initial bilabials "b-" and "m-" is evident in variant pronunciations of the Mandarin word for "secretary", where we find 秘書 (also written as 祕書) being pronounced as "mìshū" (with a voiced bilabial nasal) in MSM, but with "bìshū" (voiceless bilabial plosive) as a common variant in non-Mandarin dialects and topolects

    I think these might technically be separate phenomena.

    秘/祕 are p- in Middle Chinese (reflecting "b" in pinyin)
    密 is m- in Middle Chinese.

    Wikipedia cites a 1958 source that pronouncing 秘/祕 with m- represents a conflation with 密. That makes sense in light of Middle Chinese only having p-.

    Pronouncing 密 with b- represents standard hardening of m- to b- in some Sinitic languages, which remains in accordance with the Middle Chinese m-.

    (Ironically, 密 seems to go back to an earlier Old Chinese ᵐb- as the source of Middle Chinese m-, but that does not affect the above).

  3. cameron said,

    November 20, 2024 @ 9:00 am

    isn't this the same bilabial alternation that we see in Burmese in the Burma/Myanmar name alteration?

  4. Victor Mair said,

    November 20, 2024 @ 9:54 am

    Also Bombay / Mumbai.

  5. Rodger C said,

    November 20, 2024 @ 11:01 am

    Let Observation, with extensive view,
    Survey mankind from China to Milu.

  6. Jonathan Smith said,

    November 20, 2024 @ 4:44 pm

    The post itself doesn't mention (MSM) mi4 密 'dense/thick/etc.' at all — but yeah it could be relevant to the standard language shift of bi4 秘 to > mi4… one possibility is that the change is an "assimilation" of a sort in the word [b > m]i4mi 秘密 'secret' specifically, with subsequent spread to (almost) all words written with "秘" (mi4shu1 秘書 'secretary', shen2mi4 神秘 'mysterious'…). Maybe better would be to regard it as a folk etymological merger of these originally separate morphemes ('dense/thick' and 'abstruse') as a single mi4 'secret/dense', spelled both 秘 and 密. The meanings were long close-ish, with the latter seeming often to gloss the former in dictionaries…

    Whereas these etyma have stayed very much non-homophonous in the southern languages… they became closer to such with the loss of coda -t in 'dense' the north, which could have helped the above change along.

  7. Vampyricon said,

    November 29, 2024 @ 11:52 pm

    it could be relevant to the standard language shift of bi4 秘 to > mi4… one possibility is that the change is an "assimilation" of a sort in the word [b > m]i4mi 秘密 'secret' specifically, with subsequent spread to (almost) all words written with "秘" (mi4shu1 秘書 'secretary', shen2mi4 神秘 'mysterious'…).

    I've always wondered how many "irregular developments" in Sinitic are actually due to the influence of polysyllabic words and later regularisation. My speculation (and I'll clearly mark this as speculation unlike certain other commenters) is that 秘 only appeared in 神秘 and 秘密, which are both within the vicinity of a nasal, and nasal assimilation seems like a reasonable explanation. I would guess 秘書 was a later coinage and therefore is a reading pronounciation.

    奴隸 núLì seems like another good candidate, as it's /t/ in many non-Mandarinic languages, cf. Cantonese nou4 dai6, and the intervocalic nature caused it to become a tap (e.g. in many non-British Englishes' "better"), and the lack of a /ɾ/ phoneme had Mandarinic speakers reaching for the closest dental sonorant /l/.

    Again, this is all speculation on my part, but if anyone knows any papers on the subject I'd love to know of them.

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