Re: Notes on Tam Wing Kwong, "The Game of Sparrow as played in China".

Julian Bradfield <jcb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:<e6c4ql2bx0d.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>...
> thierry.depaulis@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Thierry Depaulis) writes:

> I meant to ask before, could you explain this "he pronounced hu"
> thing? Are you saying that the character whose pinyin representation
> is "he" is actually pronounced as if its pinyin representation were
> "hu"? This seems rather unlikely, since pinyin is explicitly a
> representation of speech!

Don't believe it. The pinyin romanisation is meant to represent a
standardised pronounciation based *on the Peking parlance*. But there
are local variations (I mean in Mandarin Chinese), such as this one.
Large dictionaries say that 'he' (match, combine) is read as 'hu' in
Suzhou.

> >>and others added four more kinds "Teens, Deis, Yuns
> >>and Hwos" called Jongs ([jiang4] Generals). 
> >
> > I am trying to work out what these names mean. "Hwo" apparently is for
> > Mandarin he2/hu. But what can be "Teens, Deis, Yuns"??
> 
> Yes, it's very irritating that just for once he doesn't write the
> Chinese there. However, Teen and Dei are Heaven and Earth; one would
> expect Man and Woman, perhaps. He calls the four types of scoring
> counter Teen, Dei, Yun, Ngo, so that's consistent with Yun being Man.
> But Hwo?

Hwo, as we already know, is jyutping wo4/wo6, i.e. Mandarin he2
(harmony).
Teen is tin, jyutping tin1 = Mandarin tian1 (heaven).
Dei is the same in the jyutping romanisation (dei6) and means "earth"
(Mandarin di4) as you suggest.
The last one, Yun, must be Mandarin ren2 (man), which is jan4
(pronounced /yan/) in the jyutping Cantonese system.
So we have here tian (heaven), di (earth), ren (man), he (harmony), a
quartet that is well represented in the ealiest mahjong sets as
published by Michael Stanwick. Michael are you with us?

All early mahjong sets dating back to the 1870's have a series of
extra tiles that are called 'wang' (kings, princes, or rulers). There
are four "kings" for the four cardinal directions and four "kings" for
the four principles: tian (heaven), di (earth), ren (man), he
(harmony).
This quartet seems to be derived from dice and dominoes.

Cheers,
Thierry