Non-Sinoxenic pronunciations

Chronologically, Mongolian borrowing of Chinese vocabulary took place later than that of the Sinoxenic languages.[1] In contrast to Sinoxenic vocabulary, Sino-Mongolian vocabulary is not the result of an attempt to adopt Chinese as the literary language or the adoption of the Chinese writing system as a whole. The majority of Mongolian loanwords from Chinese occurred in the last 800 years, sourced from Early, Middle, and Modern Mandarin as spoken in northern China, rather than Classical Chinese, as in the case of Sinospheric cultures.

Modes of borrowing are not uniform. Some vocabulary was borrowed indirectly, such as the term for writing, bichig (Mongolian script: ᠪᠢᠴᠢᠭ᠌; Mongolian Cyrillic: бичиг), which appears to have entered from Turkic in ancient times. Bichig derives from biir (ᠪᠢᠷ; Mongolian Cyrillic: бийр), which was adopted from Tibetan for writing instrument, pir (Tibetan: པིར), which itself is derived from the Chinese word for pen or writing brush (Chinese: 笔; pinyin: bǐ).

In more recent times, most words have been borrowed directly. Some are starkly different from the Chinese pronunciation because of the long time for pronunciations to change or because of impressionistic auditory borrowing. One example is the word for window, tsonkh (Mongolian script: ᠴᠣᠩᠬᠣ; Mongolian Cyrillic: цонх), from Chinese chuānghu (Chinese: 窗戶). Similarly, the word for peace, taivang (Mongolian script: ᠲᠠᠢᠢᠪᠣᠩ; Mongolian Cyrillic: тайван) is supposedly from Chinese tàipíng (Chinese: 太平), which also means peace. Note that the traditional spelling (which equates to 'taibung') makes no attempt to reproduce the original vowel in 平 'píng'.

Although the traditional Mongolian script often tends to highlight the original Chinese pronunciation, the Cyrillic orthography, which spells words as they are pronounced, obscures the connection with Chinese. For instance, the syllable-final н in the Cyrillic script is pronounced /ŋ/ in Mongolia, thus neutralising the earlier distinction between /ŋ/ and /n/ in this position and further obscuring the regularity of relationships with Chinese. The distinction between /ŋ/ and /n/ is retained in Inner Mongolian dialects.

Note that the following examples are in the context of non-Sinoxenic vocabulary that exist in the Mongolian language.

The Sinoxenic languages of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese are included for comparative purposes. Words that do not actually occur in the Sinoxenic languages are given in their Sinoxenic reading but are greyed out. The absence of these terms in Sinoxenic languages suggests that the borrowing of Chinese in Mongolian is attributed to a more recent form of a Sinitic language (such as Early Mandarin and Middle Mandarin), rather than Classical Chinese.

Although Sino-Korean vocabulary dominates the spectrum of borrowed Chinese words, there are non-Sinoxenic words in Korean that are derived from Chinese. In such cases, the corresponding pronunciation for the Chinese character (hanja) does not match the borrowed vocabulary. Such loanwords most likely preserve a slightly different form of a Sinitic language from the one codified in Sino-Korean, thus making such words Chinese borrowings with a non-Sinoxenic pronunciation.

• The Korean term for brush, but (붓), is derived from Middle Korean but (붇), which, in turn, is most likely derived from Early Middle Chinese. However, the Sino-Korean pronunciation for brush 筆 was codified (and is pronounced) as pil (필).

• The Korean term for ink, meok (먹), is most likely derived from the Early Middle Chinese term for ink (墨), but actually, the Sino-Korean reading for 墨 was codified (and is pronounced) as muk (묵).

• The Korean term for horse, mal (말), may have been derived from the Early Middle Chinese term for horse (馬), but actually, the Sino-Korean reading for 馬 was codified (and is pronounced) as ma (마). However, considering the Mongolic word for horse, mori, shows a trace of the l/r consonant in mal (Korean mal becomes mari in the nominative case), it is unlikely to be a Chinese loanword.

A few native Korean words closely resemble reconstructed pronunciations of Old Chinese that was spoken at least 2000 years ago in China. It's unclear if these words are borrowed from Old Chinese, or if Old Chinese borrowed these words from an ancient Koreanic language, or if these words are borrowed from another language (i.e. both Old Korean and Old Chinese borrowed from another language), or if these words are descended from a common proto language, or if these words are false cognates by mere chance. These words may not be the case of non-Sinoxenic pronunciations.

• The Korean term for wind, baram (바람), may have been derived from the Old Chinese term for wind, /*prəm/ (風), but the Sino-Korean reading for 風 was codified (and is pronounced) as pung (풍).

• The Korean term for taste, mat / mas- (맛), may have been derived from the Old Chinese term for taste, /*mɯds/ (味), but the Sino-Korean reading for 味 was codified (and is pronounced) as mi (미).

• The Korean term for bowl, geureut / geureus- (그릇), may have been derived from the Old Chinese term for container, /*kʰrɯds/ (器), but the Sino-Korean reading for 器 was codified (and is pronounced) as gi (기).

• The Korean term for comb, bit / bis- (빗), may have been derived from the Old Chinese term for comb, /*bis/ (篦), but the Sino-Korean reading for 篦 was codified (and is pronounced) as bi (비).

• The Korean term for river, garam (가람), may have been derived from the Old Chinese term for river, /*kroːŋ/ (江), but the Sino-Korean reading for 江 was codified (and is pronounced) as gang (강).

• The Korean term for bear, gom (곰), may have been derived from the Old Chinese term for bear, /*ɢʷlɯm/ (熊), but the Sino-Korean reading for 熊 was codified (and is pronounced) as ung (웅).

• The Korean term for dragon, mireu (미르), may have been derived from the Old Chinese term for dragon, /*mroːŋ/ (龍), but the Sino-Korean reading for 龍 was codified (and is pronounced) as ryong (룡).

• The Korean term for street, geori (거리), may have been derived from the Old Chinese term for street, /*kreː/ (街), but the Sino-Korean reading for 街 was codified (and is pronounced) as ga (가).

The word "radish" in Chinese (simplified Chinese: 萝卜; traditional Chinese: 蘿蔔; pinyin: luóbo) was attested in various forms since early Old Chinese. This is the source of the terms for "radish" and "turnip" in Sinoxenic languages like Korean (나복, nabok; or 라복, rabok) and it has also been adopted in a non-Sinoxenic way by many other languages in China and elsewhere in Asia. In Mongolian as spoken in Mongolia, its meaning has shifted to refer to a carrot, while radish is referred to as tsagaan luuvan (Mongolian: Цагаан лууван, lit. 'white carrot').