Talk:米

Radical wikilink?

What happened to the radical wikilink for this character? Badagnani 10:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The wikilink is in the Nanshu header syntax, replaced by the template; this is true of all the characters. However, the template has the radical as a parameter, so we can make it do whatever we like. Robert Ullmann 12:18, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

What happened to significance of written form of character?

What happened to the significance of the written form of this character? This would seem to be of great importance, as this particular one appears to depict something about a growing plant with rice coming off the top. I strongly suggest against the deletion of this section, as it is of great educational importance. Badagnani 18:28, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Mandarin readings

Can it be added in which contexts the two different Mandarin readings are used? 24.29.228.33 19:55, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Meter?

How did the character for "rice" come to be used for the word meter? Is it because it sounds like the first syllable of "meter"? If so, why didn't they come up with a different character for the term for "meter"? 24.29.228.33 10:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

OJ yo₂nV- alternation?

米 (kun: よね yone < OJ yo₂ne) has a nanori (名乗り) reading よな yona. So may we etymologize よね yo₂ne as yo₂na- + -i)? I still have some doubts because yo₂na- seemingly violates Arisaka's law against the presence of both o₂ & a in one same word.Erminwin (talk) 03:33, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

@Erminwin, yona- should be kun instead of nanori since it's the bound apophonic form. Note also that 稲 (ine) has a bound form ina- as in 稲妻, 電 (inazuma, “lightning”). Could be that the i- would've been parsed as (y)i- and therefore */jɨ/ → /jə/ or ⟨yo₂⟩. What do you mean by the "presence of both o₂ & a in same one syllable"? ～ POKéTalker（═◉═） 06:34, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

@Poketalker, my mistyping. I intended to state that Arisaka's law prevents o₂ from appearing in the same word as o₁ or a. That's why I originally doubted even the existence of yo₂na until finding that in ONCOJ. Thanks for confirming that yona is indeed the kun reading as well as apophonic bound form of yone (so -e in yone was indeed underlying e₂ in OJ then). JDict suggests here that よな (yona < OJ yo₂na) is nanori, & I'm not an expert on historical Japanese phonology that's why I followed JDict in classifying yona as nanori instead of kun.

Instances I've been able to find for yona-:

• 淘ぐ・汰ぐ (yonagu), modern 淘げる・汰げる (yonageru, “to wash rice”) -- phonetics uncertain. Not found in the MYS. May appear as late as the 1700s. KDJ entry.
• 米蔵 (yonagura, “rice storehouse”, may be obsolete) -- phonetics again uncertain. Not found in the MYS. Stated to appear in the Wamyōshō. DJS, DJR, and KDJ entries.
• 米子 Yonako, Yonago -- another place name. Phonetics uncertain. Not found in the MYS. KDJ entry, JA WP page.
• 吉隠 Yonabari -- place name. See also the Encyclopedia Nipponica article. Phonetics uncertain, as I can only find this in the Man'yōshū in the non-phonetic kanji spelling 吉隠.
• 米虫 (yonamushi, “w:Maize weevil”, may be obsolete) -- phonetics again uncertain. Not found in the MYS. Stated to appear in the Wamyōshō. DJS, DJR, and KDJ entries, JA WP article.

@Poketalker, I seem to recall that you might be able to access the Wamyōshō. Can you? And if so, does that include any reliable man'yōgana spellings for these words? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:42, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr:

• yonagura:

  倉廪［㮹字附］　唐韻云：倉圓曰囷去倫反渠殞反兼名苑云囷一云廪力稔反［萬呂久良］一云［與奈久良］一云［伊奈久良］倉也釋名云倉七岡反甲倉［古不久良］校倉［阿世久良］俗用之今桉本文並未詳藏穀物也漢語云倉㮹［久良乃和］今桉孫愐切韻𠊷緻㨖㮹四字並陟利反從人者會也從糸者密也從手者剌也從木者布散也可爲倉具之義所出未詳也

• yonamushi:

  蛄䗐　爾雅集注云：蛄䗐［姑翅二音和名與奈無之］今穀米中蠹小黒虫也

The links use modern kanji spellings, but I'm able to copy the kyujitai/variant ones from the Waseda scans online. ～ POKéTalker（═◉═） 22:32, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Looping back to this years later, now with access to the ONCOJ site and its grep feature. Searching for \byona (for any instances of words starting with "yona") finds five instances of this string as a sub-string of the word yonabari. All five are from the MYS, but two of them spell this as 吉名張 and two spell it as 吉魚張 (leveraging the older "snack" sense na for the 魚 kanji), so it's pretty clear that we have at least some confirmation of 'yona- even in the MYS.  :)

Cheers, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:52, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

PST speakers' lack of knowledge of rice

Recently, Sagart et al (2019) asserted that the comparison between OC 米 *C.mˤ[e]jʔ "dehusked grain" generally & Proto-Bodo-Garo *mai1 “rice, paddy, cooked rice” does not necessarily indicate that PST speakers knew rice (Oryza); neither does the comparison between Old Burmese kok “rice” and OC 穀 *[k]ˤok “grain (in the husk)” (contra Sagart, 2011). Furthermore, even this cognate set - Bengni am; Sak aŋ; Dulong am55 (meaning "rice plant") - result from the semantic shift "rice plant" < ? < “to eat liquid foods, such as gruel”; from STEDT *PTB #487 *ʔam "to eat, to drink", (compare Dhimal am & OC 飲 *q(r)[u]mʔ “to drink”). Their conclusion: "There is therefore no linguistic evidence that the ancestral Sino-Tibetans knew rice." Considering that this paper is very new, should we include its findings yet or should we wait? Erminwin (talk) 16:56, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Cognates

@Xbypass, the lenition of initial /s/ in the Proto-Austronesian daughter languages is not what I was referring to. My edit comment:

highly unlikely -- none of the known derivations from Proto-Austronesian *Semay develop initial /k/, nor is this shift explainable by any known mechanism within Japonic.

The Austronesian development from *semay to *həmay etc. does nothing to explain where initial /k/ comes from in the Japonic.

Your mention of Old Chinese 糜 (*mral) is also problematic, as again we have no explanation for that initial /k/. As written, that sentence also sounded like it's claiming a relationship between Proto-Austronesian and Old Chinese, which itself has issues, as reconstructions point to the Old Chinese as /*C.m(r)aj/ or /*mral/. That interstitial /r/ is incompatible with a derivation from *semay.

If you have any sources that point to a connection between *semay and kome, I'm all ears. For the reasons above, however, the phonology is problematic at best. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 02:31, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

@Eirikr If you read this page, the previous talk mention the reference to that point. In the meantime, I had the reference cited on the text. Although the phonology is problematic, it does not change that several experts mention the theory and thus eligible to be mentioned. The phonology problem can be added after that, of course, with suitable references, if any. Dismissing without any mention of references and edit block are not appropriate to express your disagrement.--Xbypass (talk) 03:34, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

@Xbypass, thank you for adding the references. When you'd first added this, there weren't any references; indeed, when you reverted me and added the Old Chinese, there were still no references. I'm sorry we butted heads.

Sure, no problem. --Xbypass (talk) 04:25, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Re: disagreement, I am accustomed to running into various editors (logged in or anon) who add all kinds of bogus things to JA entries. I've dealt with other editors in the past who have been most persistent even with patently incorrect material, sometimes even material that is ruled out by the very sources that the other editor themselves has added to the entry. I haven't had much interaction with you, and I honestly wasn't sure what to make of your behavior. When I saw that you'd re-reverted me, with an edit comment that didn't appear to address my earlier edit comment, I erred on the side of minimizing the potential for disruption to the entry by reverting you and then immediately coming here to write the above thread in an effort to engage you directly. Before I had finished, I saw in my Notifications that you'd already re-reverted me without edit comment, so fearing the worst due to my past experiences with those other editors, I imposed the shortest block I could that would give me time to finish writing here.

I see, I have not been a admin, so we have different point of view. --Xbypass (talk) 04:25, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Re: "If you read this page, the previous talk mention the reference to that point." — I'm not sure what you mean? What is "that point" that you refer to? There is no other mention of *semay or Proto-Austronesian anywhere on this page. If you mean that Old Chinese may have come from Proto-Austronesian, the #PST speakers' lack of knowledge of rice thread above makes no such contention, only that knowledge of rice may have entered the Proto-Sino-Tibetan family from somewhere else. I have no argument with that point. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:09, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

The previous question based on the opinion that the words are related. --Xbypass (talk) 04:25, 25 February 2022 (UTC)