Go-on
Go-on or goon (呉音; English: /ˈɡoʊ.ɒn/ GOH-on; Japanese pronunciation: [ɡo.oɴ] or [ɡoꜜoɴ], lit. "Wu sound") are an early layer of Japanese kanji readings (on'yomi) that was in use before the later kan-on (漢音) layer. Go-on was transmitted with Chinese classical and Buddhist texts and remains particularly common in Buddhist vocabulary.[1] Both go-on and kan-on reflect Middle Chinese pronunciations, adapted to Japanese phonology.[1]
History and uses
[edit]
The geographic source and route by which go-on reached Japan remain debated. Japanese reference works conventionally describe it as a southern layer relative to kan-on, but discuss both transmission from southern China and transmission through the Korean Peninsula or Baekje, rather than identifying a single source for the entire layer.[2]
Shibatani has noted that go-on readings make up the first of three waves of Chinese loans to the Japanese language, the others being kan-on and tou-sou-on (meaning Tang Song sound), with go-on being mainly associated with Buddhism.[3]
When kan-on readings were introduced, their go-on equivalents did not disappear. Many characters retain readings from both layers, and the reading used depends on the word in which the character occurs.[1] Compounds can also mix the two layers. For example, gengo (言語) combines kan-on gen with go-on go. A comparison of two historical dictionaries found that mixed go-on–kan-on forms among two-character Sino-Japanese words increased from about 15% in the 12th-century Iroha Jiruishō to about 24% in the 1603–1604 Nippo Jisho.[4]
However, some go-on sounds are now lost. Even though monolingual Japanese dictionaries list a complete inventory of go-on for all characters, some were actually reconstructed using the fanqie method or were inferred to be the same as their modern homophones.[5]
Names
[edit]These readings were formerly called wa-on (和音; lit. "Japanese sound"). The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten records go-on as a name for the older reading layer from the mid-Heian period, with an early example in Fujiwara no Kintō's Kitayama-shō (compiled c. 1012–1021); before then, wa-on was used. The dictionary notes that the name followed a Chinese contrast between go-on and a pronunciation regarded as correct, but cautions that the label itself encouraged later theories assigning the readings a specifically southern origin.[2]
Characteristics
[edit]The correspondences between go-on and kan-on are recurrent tendencies rather than exceptionless rules. Compared with kan-on, go-on more often preserves the distinction between Middle Chinese voiced and voiceless initials. Some Middle Chinese nasal initials are reflected as nasals in go-on but as voiced stops in kan-on.[6]
| Kanji | Meaning | Go-on | Kan-on | Middle Chinese[7] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 明 | bright | myō | mei | mjaeng |
| 京 | capital | kyō | kei | kjaeng |
| 上 | up | jō | shō | dzyangX |
| 下 | below | ge | ka | haeX, haeH |
See also
[edit]- On'yomi: Sino-Japanese readings
- Checked tone
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 Nakazawa, Nobuyuki (5 February 2019). 同じ漢字なのに、日本語と中国語では発音がまったく違うのはなぜですか [Why are the pronunciations of the same kanji completely different in Japanese and Chinese?]. ことば研究館 (in Japanese). National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics. Retrieved 11 August 2026.
- 1 2 呉音. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese). Shōgakukan. Retrieved 11 August 2026 – via Kotobank.
- ↑ Masayoshi Shibatani (2008). The Languages of Japan. Cambridge University Press. pp. 121–. ISBN 978-0521369183.
- ↑ Ohshima, Hideyuki (2022). "The Blending of Go-on and Kan-on in Medieval Japanese: Compared with Sino-Japanese Words Found in Iroha Jiruishō and Nippo Jisho". Mathematical Linguistics. 33 (6): 373–388. doi:10.24701/mathling.33.6_373.
- ↑ Miyake, Marc Hideo (2003). Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction. Routledge. p. 104. ISBN 978-1-134-40373-8.
- ↑ 呉音. ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典 (in Japanese). Retrieved 11 August 2026 – via Kotobank.
- ↑ Baxter, William H. (1992), A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-012324-1