From: lix@xanadu.bu.edu (Xiaowen Li)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: FWD - Hui, Kwai, Gui again
Date: 16 Oct 92 11:48:10 GMT
Organization: Boston University

A friend asked me to forward his article anonymously. All works and points
presented in the following, are his, not mine.

Lao Lix,

    I have read several posts questioning the pronunciation
of the name of the Song dynasty official who was supposedly
responsible for Yue Fei's tragic death.  One went so far as
to say your CiHai may be unreliable on "cultural" matters.  
That is plain absurd.

    There are at least three different pronunciations for
the character [wood + meeting]:

    1.  Hui4, favored by CiHai and XinHuaZiDian

    2.  Kuai4, favored in Taiwan and attested to by ZhongHuaDaZiDian
	of April 1915

    3.  Gui4, favored by GuoYuCiDian

    There is a great deal of evidence that #1 is the best one.
Best, in the sense that the character is pronounced exactly the
same as hui4 ( = meeting ).  First let's see how the Koreans 
pronounce it.  Any good-sized Korean dictionary will tell you
that [wood + meeting] is pronounced Hoy, as in HoyMok ( = hui4mu4,
Chinese juniper or cypress) and exactly like the Hoy in HoyTam 
( = hui4tan2, conference).

    Second, the "on" (i.e. Sino-Japanese) pronunciation of hui4 
(= meeting) is  Kai which is exactly the same pronunciation for
the character [wood + meeting].  That's the "Tang Yin1" currently
used.  The two characters are also pronounced the same way in
the "Han Yin1" subsystem of Sino-Japanese phonetics.

    So much for the evidence from Sinoxenic phonetics.  Finally,
let's turn to what was probably the way Prime Minster Qin's 
contemporaries were expected to pronounce the character 
[wood + meeting].  What is the zi4 of the Song prime minister 
who is said to be the main villain during the career of Yue Fei?  
Answer:  Hui4-Zhi1, Hui4 as in Hui4tan2 and zhi1 as in the name 
of the master calligrapher Wang Xi-Zhi.  Since the zi4 should 
be the ultimate determinant of the accurate meaning and sound
of its companion "ming2", the conclusion must be that Hui4
is a better choice than Kuai4, unless you are willing to
pronounce his zi4 as Kuai4-zhi1.  

    Of course, the Kuai4 in Kuai4-Ji1, so famously associated
with Wang Xi-zhi, is simply a more classical pronunciation of
hui4.  For this reason [wood + meeting] can be properly 
pronounced as Kuai4, as taught in virtually all schools in 
Taiwan.  However, as the distinction between the "Tang Yin1" 
and "Han4 Yin1" subsystems in Sino-Japanese clearly indicate,
hui4 is probably closer to how the Song elite pronounced
the character [wood + meeting] than kuai4.  The fact that 
in the MinNan dialects amd in Cantonese, [wood + meeting]
is pronounced the same way as the Kuai in Kuai4-Ji1 only
confirms this inference, in view of the extraordinary
phonetic conservatism of these southern Chinese dialects.  

    Zi Kuai4 Yi Xia Wu Ji1 Yan1 and #3 should be dismissed
without comment, pun not unintended.  In the next message
I will give another example of the general significance 
of the zi4 as linked to ming2.

[Name and Address Withheld]

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