Saturday, January 6, 2018

etymology - 売買の買とbuyの関係はあります?



買 in 売買{ばいばい} is pronounced ばい. The word "to buy", which is the translation of 買う, sounds the same. Is there some sort of connection?! 親父ギャグだけなのか…?



Answer



ないです。


It's only a superficial coincidence in present-day pronunciation.


The word corresponds to English buy is assumed to have been pronounced like *bugjaną //buɣ.jɑ.nɑ̃// in Proto-Germanic period around 500 BC. Meanwhile, 買 is assumed to have been pronounced like *mˁrajʔ (Baxter-Sagart) or *mreːʔ (Zhengzhang) in the Central Plain of China. It still retains m- consonant in most Sinitic languages (dialects).


The reason why we have b- for this kanji is that, Buddhist monks imported Middle Chinese vocabulary through Chang'an (the capital of Tang) dialect, which showed denasalization making m- into mb-; they transcribed it with then-prenasalized consonant nb-, which corresponds to today's voiced b-.


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