Non-Sinoxenic pronunciations

Non-Sinoxenic pronunciationsare vocabularies borrowed from Chinese, but differ from Sinoxenic pronunciations in that:
As such, non-Sinoxenic pronunciations are therefore loanwords in which the corresponding Chinese character is not adopted. These non-Sinoxenic pronunciations are thus most prominent in Asian languages in which cultural exchanges with Chinese culture occurred (e.g.Mongolian,Central Asian or Turkic languages), but the adoption of the Chinese writing system did not occur. This also includes non-Siniticlanguages within China (e.g.Tibetan,Uyghur,Hani,Zhuang,Hmong). While theSinoxenicmodel has traditionally held the limelight as the most distinctive and influential model for the borrowing of Chinese vocabulary, it is not the only model. For Sinoxenic languages, pronunciations are regarded as non-Sinoxenic if there is a mismatch between the vocabulary and the codified Sinoxenic pronunciation.
Chronologically, Mongolian borrowing of Chinese vocabulary took placelaterthan that of theSinoxenic languages.In contrast to Sinoxenic vocabulary, Sino-Mongolian vocabulary is not the result of an attempt to adopt Chinese as theliterary languageor the adoption of the Chinese writing system as a whole. The majority of Mongolian loanwords from Chinese occurred in the last 800 years, sourced from Early, Middle, andModern Mandarinas spoken in northern China, rather thanClassical Chinese, as in the case ofSinospheric cultures.
Modes of borrowing are not uniform. Some vocabulary was borrowed indirectly, such as the term for writing,bichig(Mongolian script:ᠪᠢᠴᠢᠭ᠌;Mongolian Cyrillic: бичиг), which appears to have entered from Turkic in ancient times.Bichigderives frombiir(ᠪᠢᠷ;Mongolian Cyrillic: бийр), which was adopted from Tibetan for writing instrument,pir(Tibetan: པིར), which itself is derived from the Chinese word forpenorwriting brush(Chinese:笔;pinyin:bǐ).
In more recent times, most words have been borrowed directly. Some are starkly different from the Chinese pronunciation because of the long time for pronunciations to change or because of impressionistic auditory borrowing. One example is the word for window,tsonkh(Mongolian script:ᠴᠣᠩᠬᠣ;Mongolian Cyrillic: цонх), from Chinesechuānghu(Chinese:窗戶). Similarly, the word for peace,taivang(Mongolian script:ᠲᠠᠢᠢᠪᠣᠩ;Mongolian Cyrillic: тайван) is supposedly from Chinese tàipíng (Chinese:太平), which also means peace. Note that the traditional spelling (which equates to 'taibung') makes no attempt to reproduce the original vowel in 平 'píng'.
Although the traditional Mongolian script often tends to highlight the original Chinese pronunciation, the Cyrillic orthography, which spells words as they are pronounced, obscures the connection with Chinese. For instance, the syllable-final н in the Cyrillic script is pronounced /ŋ/ in Mongolia, thus neutralising the earlier distinction between /ŋ/ and /n/ in this position and further obscuring the regularity of relationships with Chinese. The distinction between /ŋ/ and /n/ is retained inInner Mongoliandialects.
Note that the following examples are in the context of non-Sinoxenic vocabulary that exist in the Mongolian language.
The Sinoxenic languages of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese are included for comparative purposes. Words that do not actually occur in the Sinoxenic languages are given in their Sinoxenic reading but are greyed out. The absence of these terms in Sinoxenic languages suggests that the borrowing of Chinese in Mongolian is attributed to a more recent form of aSinitic language(such asEarly MandarinandMiddle Mandarin), rather thanClassical Chinese.
Although Sino-Korean vocabulary dominates the spectrum of borrowed Chinese words, there are non-Sinoxenic words in Korean that are derived from Chinese. In such cases, the corresponding pronunciation for the Chinese character (hanja) does not match the borrowed vocabulary. Such loanwords most likely preserve a slightly different form of a Sinitic language from the one codified in Sino-Korean, thus making such words Chinese borrowings with a non-Sinoxenic pronunciation.
A few native Korean words closely resemble reconstructed pronunciations ofOld Chinesethat was spoken at least 2000 years ago in China. It is unclear if these words are borrowed from Old Chinese, or if Old Chinese borrowed these words from an ancient Koreanic language, or if these words are borrowed from another language (i.e. both Old Korean and Old Chinese borrowed from another language), or if these words are descended from a common proto-language, or if these words arefalse cognatesby mere chance. These words may not be the case of non-Sinoxenic pronunciations.
Some Sinologists such asWang Lihave attempted to classify words of Chinese origins into at least three categories: old or pre-Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary,Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, and nativized Chinese vocabulary. Among the three, only Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary is considered to have a Sino-Xenic pronunciation, borrowed fromClassical Chinese. The other two were introduced verbally through colloquial speech and are not as systematic, especially in terms of the lack of consistent correspondence between the tones of Vietnamese tones and thefour tonesof Middle Chinese. Some dictionaries, such asthat of Thiều Chửu, may consider some pre-Sino-Vietnamese syllables to be Sino-Vietnamese.
Consequences of the multiple layers of borrowing aredoubletsand alternative readings:
Apart from these old borrowings, which are deeply integrated into Vietnamese, there are also phonetic borrowings ofYueorCantoneseorigin, such aslì xì,lạp xưởng,xíu mại,xí ngầu,hầm bà lằng, andtả pín lù. These words were also borrowed through the spoken language and, unlike Sino-Vietnamese, also are not systematic. They are especially common in southern Vietnam, which has a significant population of Chinese, known as theHoa ethnic group. A lot of these pronunciations came from recent Cantonese migration to southern Vietnam during the 17th–20th centuries.Most of the Cantonese eventually settled down inChợ Lớn,and they introduced their cuisine to Vietnam. Thus, many Cantonese borrowings in Vietnamese are food-related.
According to Zev Handel, Sino-Zhuang is the term used to describe pronunciations in theZhuang languagethat are used to read Chinese characters. These borrowings are borrowed from Old Chinese to present-day Chinese. However, there were no large scale borrowings or formal standardised readings of Chinese characters such as seen during the development of the Sino-xenic languages such as Vietnamese.These readings were unsystematically borrowed.
The word "radish" in Chinese (simplified Chinese:萝卜;traditional Chinese:蘿蔔;pinyin:luóbo) was attested in various forms since early Old Chinese. This is the source of the terms for "radish" and "turnip" in Sinoxenic languages like Korean (나복, nabok; or 라복, rabok) and it has also been adopted in a non-Sinoxenic way by many other languages in China and elsewhere in Asia. In Mongolian as spoken inMongolia, its meaning has shifted to refer to acarrot, while radish is referred to astsagaan luuvan(Mongolian:Цагаан лууван,lit.'white carrot').