{"id":50257,"date":"2021-02-16T18:01:10","date_gmt":"2021-02-16T23:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=50257"},"modified":"2021-02-16T18:06:08","modified_gmt":"2021-02-16T23:06:08","slug":"kunlun-roman-letter-phonophores-for-chinese-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=50257","title":{"rendered":"Kunlun: Roman letter phonophores for Chinese characters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lucas Klein writes from Hong Kong:<\/p>\n

I just read Don Wyatt\u2019s\u00a0Blacks of Premodern China<\/i><\/a>\u00a0(which I believe you published?), and I found that someone who had previously borrowed the book from the library had left a sticky note in it\u2026 and evidently whoever it was forgot how to write\u00a0\u5d11\u5d19<\/span>, so wrote it out in\u00a0pinyin<\/i>\u00a0with the mountain radical!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Remarkably clever, I would say.\u00a0 The whole purpose of the phonetic components of Sinographs is to convey the sounds of the morphosyllables in question.\u00a0 If you can't remember how to write the relevant phonophores with Chinese components, why not write them in Pinyin or some other phonetic script?<\/p>\n

K\u016bnl\u00fan \u6606\u4f96 (\"Kunlun\") is one of those evocative, disyllabic Sinitic terms that has all the look of a transcription from a foreign tongue.\u00a0 Even more curious is its broad signification for many different places and peoples:<\/p>\n

1. a\u00a0large mountain range<\/a> between the Tibetan Plateau and the Tarim Basin; when I travelled a lot in this region (80s-10s), I knew these mountains as the Qurum Tagh<\/p>\n

2. a\u00a0mountain situated far to the west in Chinese mythology<\/a><\/p>\n

3. a country that vaguely referred to a general swath of southerly island Southeast Asia circa the\u00a0Moluccas<\/a>, equivalent to period\u00a0Sanskrit<\/a>\u00a0Dvipatala<\/i>\u00a0or\u00a0Pali<\/a>\u00a0Dipattala<\/i>\u00a0(also\u00a0Jipattala<\/i>,\u00a0Nipattala<\/i>)<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0C\u00f4n S\u01a1n<\/a>, also known as C\u00f4n L\u00f4n, the largest island of the C\u00f4n \u0110\u1ea3o archipelago, off the coast of southern Vietnam.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Kunlun slave<\/a>\u00a0(K\u016bnl\u00fan n\u00fa \u6606\u4f96\u5974) \"dark-skinned and wavy-haired\" slaves in ancient China who were from island Southeast Asia — they featured prominently in Tang period (618-907) classical language short fiction (chu\u00e1nq\u00ed<\/span>\u00a0\u50b3\u5947<\/a>) and were described as having near supernatural powers<\/p>\n

(source<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Additionally, I recall that there was a \"Kunlun\" located in the far northwest of India, roughly in the area of northern Pakistan or Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

In more recent times, the name \"Kunlun\" has also been applied to a major energy company, various types of martial arts (probably inspired by no. 5 above), a sect that is prominent in\u00a0w\u01d4xi\u00e1<\/span>\u00a0\u6b66\u4fe0 (\"martial hero\") fiction, a ship, an asteroid belt, an ice hockey club, a critical server of the beleaguered Huawei technology corporation, etc.<\/p>\n

Reconstructions<\/b><\/p>\n