Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng

Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng (戚林八音, Hanyu Pinyin: Qī Lín Bāyīn), sometimes translated as Book of Eight Sounds or Book of Eight Tones in English, is a Chinese rime book of approximately ten thousand characters based on the earlier form of the Fuzhou dialect. First compiled in the 17th century, it is the pioneering work of all written sources for Min languages, and is widely quoted in modern academic research in Chinese phonology.

Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng is in fact a combination of two dictionaries Chék (戚參將八音字義便覽, The Eight Sounds of General Chék and a Convenient Prospectus of Word Meaning) and Lìng (太史林碧山先生珠玉同聲, The Homonyms of Pearl and Jade by the Honorable Lìng Pék-săng). The compilation date of the former antecedes that of the latter.

Authorship

The two surnames Chék and Lìng appearing on the title stand for Chék Gié-guŏng (戚繼光Qī Jìguāng) and Lìng Pék-săng (林碧山, Lín Bìshān), which might mislead people into thinking that they were the authors of this book. Since the famous military general Chék Gié-guŏng was a native of Shandong Province and no records show he had mastered Fuzhou dialect within the short period of his stay in Fuzhou, the likelihood of his being one of the authors have been ruled out without doubt. In recent years, the authenticity of Lìng Pék-săng being the other author has also been put into dispute. So far, the true authorship of Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng still remains unknown.

Tones, initials, and rimes

Tones

The tonal categories of Fuzhou dialect has remained stable since the time of Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng. In the book title, Bāyīn (lit. eight sounds) denotes eight tones, whose names are: (1) 上平, (2) 上上, (3) 上去, (4) 上入, (5) 下平, (6) 下上, (7) 下去, and (8) 下入. But the sixth tone 下上 is actually identical with the second one 上上 and therefore exists in theory only. In other words, Fuzhou dialect has seven rather than eight tones.

However, due to the lack of phonetic descriptions of the seven tones, the deduction of the tonal values of that time is considered beyond possibility.

Initials

In Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng, the fifteen initials are organized into a five-character shī (the last five characters "打掌與君知" are simply used to make up the four lines as a whole), as follows:

    柳邊求氣低, ([l], [p], [k], [k'], [t])
    波他曾日時, ([p'], [t'], [ts], [n], [s])
    鶯蒙語出非, (null initial, [m], [ŋ], [ts'], [h])
    打掌與君知.

In spite of the perceptible confluence of [n] and [l] in modern Fuzhou dialect, the initial structure nowadays is by and large the same as it was in the time of Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng.

Rimes

Likewise, a cí is built up in Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng by all thirty-three rimes in the then Fuzhou dialect (three characters, "金", "梅" and "遮", are redundant), as follows:

    春花香, ([uŋ/uk], [ua/uaʔ], [ioŋ/iok])
    秋山開, ([iu], [aŋ/ak], [ai])
    嘉賓歡歌須金杯. ([a/aʔ], [iŋ/ik], [uaŋ/uak], [o/oʔ], [y], redundant, [uoi])
    孤燈光輝燒銀缸. ([u/uʔ], [ɛŋ/ɛk], [uoŋ/uok], [ui], [ieu], [yŋ/yk], [oŋ/ok])
    之東郊, ({i}, [øʔ/øk], [au])
    過西橋. ([uo/uoʔ], [ɛ/ɛʔ], [io/ioʔ])
    雞聲催初天, ([ie], [iaŋ/iak], [øy], [œ/œʔ], [ieŋ/ieʔ])
    奇梅歪遮溝. ([ia/iaʔ], redundant, [uai], redundant, [ɛu])

The past couple of centuries witnessed three major changes in Fuzhou dialect. The first is the phenomenon of close/open rimes, by which the 上去, 上入 and 下去 characters shift its rime to its open form under certain circumstances; the second is the merger of [iu] and [ieu], as well as [ui] and [uoi]; and the last is the confusion of the coda [-k] and [-ʔ].

The role in early studies of Fuzhou dialect

For centuries, Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng had been utilized by local people as an authoritative reference book of the Foochow pronunciation. Furthermore, it also greatly assisted the earliest Western missionaries in Fuzhou in learning and studying the native language.

M.C. White, a Methodist from the United States, is the first missionary that attempted to romanize Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng, as he specifically pointed out in his work: "... the system of initials and finals used in the 'Book of Eight Tones,' ... would form a complete alphabet for the Fuh Chau dialect. They have been so used by missionaries for writing colloquial phrases, in their private study of the language. Three of the gospels have been written out in this manner by Chinese teachers in the employment of missionaries." M.C. White made a careful analysis of all phonemes and designed the so-called William Jones Phonetic Alphabet, which consists of fourteen consonants (null initial excluded) and nine vowels:

i) Consonants

    ch, ch', h, k, k', l, m, n, ng, p, p', s, t, t'

ii) Vowels

    a, e, è, ë, i, o, ò, u, ü

William Jones Phonetic Alphabet had varied over time, and became standardized as Foochow Romanized (Bàng-uâ-cê) several decades later.

This article was originally published in the English Wikipedia by GnuDoyng