Why is ヒョウ the 音読み of 氷?


氷/冰 has [pronunciations bīng/bing1/빙 (bing)/băng in
Mandarin/Cantonese/Korean/Vietnamese](https://cjkv-
dict.com/?search=%E6%B0%B7), yet the Japanese 音読み is ヒョウ. Is there a process
that explains this sound change, or does this come from another dialect? (Or
is it a case of 慣用音?)




**TL/DR**

This is absolutely regular and continues the pronunciation of mid-8th century
Chang'an Late Middle Chinese. However, there are details (such as the
corresponding go-on) which are not exactly clear.

**Long-ish**

The Early Middle Chinese pronunciation for 冰／氷 is 筆陵切
([fanqie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanqie)), that is, _ping_ (Baxter
reconstruction). That is already enough to understand both _h-_ and _-u_ of
the modern pronunciation: _p > ɸ > h_ is a general sound change in the history
of Japanese, while the final _-ng_ of Chinese was, due to the absence of
anything similar in Nara and Early Heian Japanese, borrowed as a nasalized
_-ũ_ , which later lost nasality.

The interesting thing is why the vowel in the middle is _-o-_. The modern
reading ヒョウ, if we assume the _-ng_ ending, can go back to actual ヒョウ ( _pyoũ_
), or ヒャウ ( _pyaũ_ ), or maybe ヘウ ( _peũ_ ). The version with ヘウ would seem to
make more sense, assuming the borrowing took Chinese _ping_ with a slightly
more open vowel, similar to _peng_. But this is not corroborated by the data:
any Japanese dictionary says ヒョウ is the historical reading, and thus claims
that Chinese _ping_ was borrowed as something akin to _pyoũ_.

In order to check whether that is a 慣用音 reading, we can start by checking
other characters with the same final _-ing_. In the terminology of the rhyme
tables, that's rhyme 133 蒸 ( _-ing/_ -wing*). It contains a lot of frequent
characters, such as: 承 ( _dzying_ ) ジョウ・ショウ, 徴 ( _tring_ ) チョウ, 勝 ( _sying(H)_
) ショウ. As we see, this is not a fluke: the _-ing_ ending is indeed taken in
Japanese as _-you_ , in many unrelated words.

Why would that be? Well, the Early Middle Chinese reconstructions we started
with are based on the convenience of the _Qièyùn_ dictionary, which represents
the literary pronunciation of late 6th century and is also a compromise
between Northern and Southern features, not corresponding to the actual
pronunciation of anyone except maybe some very orthoepically minded literati.
Meanwhile, the go-on borrowings typically represent the pronunciations of
Korean elite of around 7th century, while kan-on is a wholesale borrowing of
Late Middle Chinese of the Tang capital, Chang'an, from mid-8th century, which
was quite peculiar and is not apparently ancestor to any modern dialect.

The easiest explanation would thus be that the Chang'an pronunciaiton which
was the basis for kan-on rendered _-ing_ as something closer to being borrowed
as _-yoũ_.

Edwin G. Pulleyblank, in his _Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation: in Early
Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin_ , provides a Late
Middle Chinese reconstruction _piəŋ_ (level tone), which is perfect: Old
Japanese vowel _ö_ , phonetically [ə], is one of the two sources of modern
Japanese _o_ , so a borrowed Chang'an _piəŋ_ would become _pyəũ_ in Japanese
and then, indeed, give ヒョウ with historical spelling also ヒョウ.

The only remaining mystery is why the go-on reading also shows _-yoũ_ despite
apparently borrowed (through one of the languages of Korea) from a stage of
the Chinese language when the pronunciation was closer to _ping_ (which would
lead to modern Japanese **ヒュウ). But with the irregularity of go-on in
principle, this might be not discoverable. Perhaps, the enforced go-on reading
was normalized after kan-on, to which there are many precedents. [As in
neither of the characters we considered (氷, 承, 徴, 勝) the go-on is in current
use, the go-on for such characters could be lexicographically fictitious!]
Perhaps, the borrowing was ultimately from a dialect where the shift to _-iəŋ_
came earlier. Perhaps, the intermediate Korean Peninsula language phonology
was somehow involved.

_Literature:_

  * Pulleyblank, Edwin G. _Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation: in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin._ UBC press, 1991.

  * Frellesvig, Bjarke. _A history of the Japanese language._ Cambridge University Press, 2010.

  * Miyake, Marc Hideo. _Old Japanese: A phonetic reconstruction._ Routledge, 2003.

  * Baxter, William H. _A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology._ De Gruyter Mouton, 1992.

  * Various 漢和辞典 dictionaries.




**TL/DR**

This is absolutely regular and continues the pronunciation of mid-8th century
Chang'an Late Middle Chinese. However, there are details (such as the
corresponding go-on) which are not exactly clear.

**Long-ish**

The Early Middle Chinese pronunciation for 冰／氷 is 筆陵切
([fanqie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanqie)), that is, _ping_ (Baxter
reconstruction). That is already enough to understand both _h-_ and _-u_ of
the modern pronunciation: _p > ɸ > h_ is a general sound change in the history
of Japanese, while the final _-ng_ of Chinese was, due to the absence of
anything similar in Nara and Early Heian Japanese, borrowed as a nasalized
_-ũ_ , which later lost nasality.

The interesting thing is why the vowel in the middle is _-o-_. The modern
reading ヒョウ, if we assume the _-ng_ ending, can go back to actual ヒョウ ( _pyoũ_
), or ヒャウ ( _pyaũ_ ), or maybe ヘウ ( _peũ_ ). The version with ヘウ would seem to
make more sense, assuming the borrowing took Chinese _ping_ with a slightly
more open vowel, similar to _peng_. But this is not corroborated by the data:
any Japanese dictionary says ヒョウ is the historical reading, and thus claims
that Chinese _ping_ was borrowed as something akin to _pyoũ_.

In order to check whether that is a 慣用音 reading, we can start by checking
other characters with the same final _-ing_. In the terminology of the rhyme
tables, that's rhyme 133 蒸 ( _-ing/_ -wing*). It contains a lot of frequent
characters, such as: 承 ( _dzying_ ) ジョウ・ショウ, 徴 ( _tring_ ) チョウ, 勝 ( _sying(H)_
) ショウ. As we see, this is not a fluke: the _-ing_ ending is indeed taken in
Japanese as _-you_ , in many unrelated words.

Why would that be? Well, the Early Middle Chinese reconstructions we started
with are based on the convenience of the _Qièyùn_ dictionary, which represents
the literary pronunciation of late 6th century and is also a compromise
between Northern and Southern features, not corresponding to the actual
pronunciation of anyone except maybe some very orthoepically minded literati.
Meanwhile, the go-on borrowings typically represent the pronunciations of
Korean elite of around 7th century, while kan-on is a wholesale borrowing of
Late Middle Chinese of the Tang capital, Chang'an, from mid-8th century, which
was quite peculiar and is not apparently ancestor to any modern dialect.

The easiest explanation would thus be that the Chang'an pronunciaiton which
was the basis for kan-on rendered _-ing_ as something closer to being borrowed
as _-yoũ_.

Edwin G. Pulleyblank, in his _Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation: in Early
Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin_ , provides a Late
Middle Chinese reconstruction _piəŋ_ (level tone), which is perfect: Old
Japanese vowel _ö_ , phonetically [ə], is one of the two sources of modern
Japanese _o_ , so a borrowed Chang'an _piəŋ_ would become _pyəũ_ in Japanese
and then, indeed, give ヒョウ with historical spelling also ヒョウ.

The only remaining mystery is why the go-on reading also shows _-yoũ_ despite
apparently borrowed (through one of the languages of Korea) from a stage of
the Chinese language when the pronunciation was closer to _ping_ (which would
lead to modern Japanese **ヒュウ). But with the irregularity of go-on in
principle, this might be not discoverable. Perhaps, the enforced go-on reading
was normalized after kan-on, to which there are many precedents. [As in
neither of the characters we considered (氷, 承, 徴, 勝) the go-on is in current
use, the go-on for such characters could be lexicographically fictitious!]
Perhaps, the borrowing was ultimately from a dialect where the shift to _-iəŋ_
came earlier. Perhaps, the intermediate Korean Peninsula language phonology
was somehow involved.

_Literature:_

  * Pulleyblank, Edwin G. _Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation: in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin._ UBC press, 1991.

  * Frellesvig, Bjarke. _A history of the Japanese language._ Cambridge University Press, 2010.

  * Miyake, Marc Hideo. _Old Japanese: A phonetic reconstruction._ Routledge, 2003.

  * Baxter, William H. _A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology._ De Gruyter Mouton, 1992.

  * Various 漢和辞典 dictionaries.

