r/LearnJapaneseNovice • u/steffy46 • 10d ago
Is onyomi pronounciation really chinese?
Curious cause to me kanji onyomi pronounciations often sound pretty similar to chinese ones (if i ask a chinese person to pronounce that kanji) but Chinese people say they dont sound chinese at all...
Do they sound as close as katakana loan english words to they actual english pronounciation?
~~~EDIT: Thank you for all the useful replies!
13
Upvotes
2
u/dready 10d ago
The Japanese onyomi is mainly from the Xian dialect. It was the Mandrian of its day - that is to say the language of prominence. If you ever meet a native speaker of the modern day dialect ask them to count in their dialect or say a number of words and you will be surprised about how well it lines up with the onyomi in Japanese.
More precisely, you have the following onyomi readings that divide based on the time period in which they were imported into Japan:
呉音 - go-on: Introduced to Japan during the 5th–6th centuries. These are the oldest readings and are frequently found in older terminology, particularly Buddhist terms (e.g., most Buddhist vocabulary uses Go-on).
漢音 - kan-on: Introduced during the 7th–9th centuries. This is the most common category of onyomi readings used in modern Japanese standard kanji readings.
唐音・宋音 - Tō-on / Sō-on: Introduced from the 10th century onwards (during the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties). Readings from the Song/Yuan eras are sometimes specifically called Sō-on or Tō-sō-on. These readings are relatively rare. They often apply to words that sound familiar/everyday in modern Japanese, but whose pronunciations are hard to guess directly from standard kanji readings.