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Sino-Japanese n- / d- initial interchange

Language Log 2025-10-01

In his remarks on "Stay hyDRAEted", Alec Strange noted that you can't avoid reading dorei no remonēdo ドレイのレモネーど  (intended to be "Drae's Lemonade") as "slave lemonade" (dorei / ドレイ / 奴隷 ["slave"]).  Coming at 奴隷 from the Sinitic side, my instinct is to read 奴隷 as beginning with an n- (or in a few cases l-), so it would have nothing to do with "Drae's".

(Wiktionary)

So I started to ask around how is it that Japanese has a d- initial for 奴隷 ("slave") and Sinitic has an n- initial?

David Spafford:

No idea, linguistically, but it’s not an odd one off. 

努力 ("make an effort; strive; endeavor") is pronounced doryoku. [VHM:  not like nǔlì as in Mandarinì

Nathan Hopson:

Do is the standard ondoku 音読* learned in middle school, ヌ is considered hyō-gai 表外 (outside of the table of standard readings). https://kanji.jitenon.jp/kanjic/1204

*[VHM:  the reading of a Japanese word written in kanji that is roughly based on the pronunciation of the kanji characters in the originating Sinitic topolect at the time the word was introduced into Japanese (Wiktionary)]

VHM:  phonologically speaking, ヌ is pronounced with an n- initial, not a d-

Etymology

Simplified in the Heian period from the man'yōgana kanji 奴.

Pronunciation

Syllable

ヌ • (nu) 

    1. The katakana syllable ヌ (nu). Its equivalent in hiragana is ぬ (nu). It is the twenty-third syllable in the gojūon order; its position is ナ行ウ段 (na-gyō u-dan, “row na, section u”)

(Wiktionary)

N.B.: nǔlì 努力 ("effort"); núlì 奴隸 ("slave").

The following remarks by John Whitman are intended for historical linguists::

The alternation btw d- and n- with 奴 reflects the general alternation between kan’on 漢音 [VHM:  Japanese kanji readings borrowed from Chinese during the Tang dynasty (7th-9th cc.)] and go’on 呉音 [VHM:  the earliest form of on'yomi 音読み (Japanese readings of Chinese characters), preceding the kan'on 漢音 readings; both go'on and kan'on exhibit characteristics of Middle Sinitic (MS) in Sino-Japanese. The kan’on 漢音 for 奴 is do, but the go’on is nu, identical to the usually reconstructed MS nu for 奴. In this case, the go’on reading is relatively unusual on the Japanese side, but it occurs e.g. in the reading 奴婢 (nuhi ぬひ), the category of slaves in the Ritsuryō 律令 Nara Period legal system.

The d-~n- alternation is standard when there is an opposition btw kan’on and go’on readings involving original MS /n/, for example 男性 dansei ‘male’ vs 男体 nantai ‘male body’. The alternation between 女性 zyosei < dyosei ‘female’ vs女体 nyotai ‘female body is the same thing.

This reflects a change in Sinitic, not Japanese. Some northern MS dialects in roughly Tang times depalatalized MS /m/, /n/, /ng/. South Coblin has a detailed study of this, looking not just at the phenomenon in Japanese kan’on but at Tibetan and intra-Sinitic Buddhistic readings. A mystery, unresolved as far as I know, is how this made it into Japanese kan’on 漢音 but not Sino-Korean, which are both held to have been borrowed around the same time, roughly mid-late Tang, perhaps a bit later in the SK case. One possibility is that the denasalizing region included Chang’an; the Koreans were savvy and in constant contact enough with China to understand that the denasalized pronunciation was substandard, even if associated with the capital region, while the Japanese clerics who imported the readings were less with it, or more superliteralist.

In modern Japanese, kan’on readings are vastly less marked, and almost always used in neologized kango 漢音. Go’on readings have a strong association with Buddhism. The 呉 wu2 designation refers most likely not to any region of China (such as Southeastern China/Suzhgou~Shanghai region), but to the Korean peninsula. The kun 訓 vernacular reading of 呉, kure, refers to Korea and is probably the same word as Korean 고려 Koryŏ [koryə] or possibly Kuryŏ [kuryə], what you get if you subtract the flattering 高 from 高句麗, as non-Korean texts often do. This reflects the fact that both Sinography and Buddhism were originally imported to Japan from Paekche.

John added this P.S.:

OK! I think a lot of the people who read your blog – especially the Chinese historical specialists – already know this better than me. But if you get comments, I have other things to say – first regarding the historical Korean sources of go’on, and then regarding an interesting nasal stop denasalization process that is going on right now in contemporary Korean.

I expect that we will receive significant comments from Koreanists.

Meanwhile, every time I see "dorei no remonēdo ドレイのレモネーど", I can't help but think of ""dorai no remonēdo ドライのレモネーど" ("dry lemonade"), but that's completely my problem.  Power of reverse suggestion.

 

Selected readings