Talk:樺太

@Suzukaze-c: Hi. Is it ソウイエト (souieto) or ソヴィエト (sovieto) in the quote? --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:10, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

There is a link to the text. It is in the old orthography that does not use smaller letters. —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 22:26, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

@Suzukaze-c: It's a large text and hard to find. Because you already saw it, I thought, I'd double-check. The spelling ソウイエト is non-standard or a misspelling, so maybe it's legitimate to link to a more correct spelling rather than leaving a read link to a wrong word? --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:59, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

It is normal according to contemporary standards, just like てつぺい (teppei). One can use {{ja-see}}. —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 00:26, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Etym

@Poketalker, do you have a source for the purported Ainu etymon you added? The JA WP seems to source their Karapto to a dictionary of Saru-dialect Ainu, which isn't very close to Sakhalin -- it's pretty much on the opposite side of Hokkaido. The Japanese term is first referenced in the late 1500s, far too late for the /p/ → /f/ lenition seen in late Old Japanese, which leaves us without a clear mechanism for borrowed Karapto to become Karafuto. Curious what you've found. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 16:12, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

@Eirikr: just found this. In the same book, page 48 says “The Japanese, unable to pronounce it as it stood, might have turned [Tokapchi] into Tokafuchi, as Karapto (Saghalien) has been turned into Karafuto, preserving the labial in an aspirated form”. Other than that, got nothing else; what do you think? ～ POKéTalker（═◉═） 07:38, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

@Poketalker: Hmm, I'm not entirely sure. In other borrowings, the Japanese term often preserves the original consonant and instead inserts a vowel. Compare English dump car → Japanese ダンプカー, Russian икра́ (ikrá) → Japanese イクラ, English capstan → Japanese キャプスタン, Ainu Kunashir → Japanese 国後 (Kunashiri), etc. Alternatively, the Japanese version might geminate the following consonant, as we see in Ainu sat poro pet → Japanese 札幌 (Sapporo). I'd expect any source term Karapto to be borrowed as either Karaputo or as Karatto. Lenition to Karafuto seems unlikely to me.

One possibility might lie in Japanese orthography. I cannot nail down with any certainty when the 半濁点 became firmly established. The JA WP article at ja:w:半濁点 only notes that 「ポルトガル人宣教師によりキリシタン文献に導入されたのが最初とされる」, but this is uncited, leaving us with no backing reference to peruse. The term thus may have been borrowed as Karaputo, but not recorded clearly, leading to later "spelling pronunciation" giving rise to modern Japanese Karafuto.

I did see that Sakhalin Ainu allows /-ht-/ consonant clusters (see various examples here), making a source term like Karahto a phonological possibility. This would be much more likely to be borrowed as Karafuto. However, I cannot currently confirm nor rule out any such term in Sakhalin Ainu. That said, Sakhalin Ainu has coda /-h/ in some places where Chitose Ainu (further south in Hokkaido) has coda /-p/. Compare Sakhalin ahto ("rain") and Chitose apto ("rain").

I struggle with the purported Ainu derivation listed at ja:w:樺太, as Ainu kamuy kar put ya mosir: there are no clear phonological mechanisms whereby Ainu kar put would become karapto. The kar → kara shift is accountable: where Hokkaido Ainu has kar ("to make"), Sakhalin has kara. But for put ("river mouth") to become -pto, that's just weird. Why would the core vowel of a one-syllable noun just vanish? Also, Ainu allows coda consonants and doesn't have any need for excrescent final vowels, so the final "o" is similarly mysterious. I think there must be a different derivation: perhaps this is native Ainu, just not from kamuy kar put ya mosir, and perhaps from a Sakhalin form like Karahto; or perhaps this is a term from some other language entirely.

Apologies for the meander. Your source looks interesting, but phonologically it seems unlikely. I suspect instead that there's a different Ainu dialect at the source, where coda /-p/ was realized instead in certain places as /-h/. Food for thought, at any rate.

Thank you! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 06:53, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

See also past RFV discussion at Talk:kamuy kar put ya mosir

Adding link here for those interested enough to peruse the Talk page. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:03, 25 May 2022 (UTC)