ABC Dictionary of Sino-Japanese Readings

ABC Dictionary of Sino-Japanese Readings
Author: Victor H. Mair
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2016-07-31
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 082487224X

The significance of Japanese-language scholarship on China cannot be overstated. Yet much of it is largely untapped by China scholars in both the West and China, in part because they are unfamiliar with the Japanese pronunciation of Chinese characters. Even those who know Japanese are frequently frustrated when seeking an obscure reading of a personal or place name. The purpose of this volume is to enable Sinologists and others involved in Chinese studies to access entries in Japanese reference works dealing with China without going through the time-consuming process of looking up characters by radical and stroke. For users of this dictionary, it is a simple matter to find a character by looking it up by its alphabetical pinyin pronunciation. Having located it, the user can go directly to the item in Japanese reference works. The Dictionary includes more than 13,072 entries not only in Chinese characters and their Sino-Japanese (ondoku/onyomi) readings, but also the Japanese (kundoku/kunyomi) readings. The romanized Japanese readings will assist in correctly transcribing Japanese names, such as the names of Japanese publishers and authors, and the technical terms employed by Japanese in their writings on China. These features will also give those familiar with pinyin greater access to material on Japanese history and culture. The ABC Dictionary of Sino-Japanese Readings will be a boon to Sinologists and others interested in the study of China.

ABC Dictionary of Ancient Japanese Phonograms

ABC Dictionary of Ancient Japanese Phonograms
Author: John R. Bentley
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 618
Release: 2015-12-31
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0824856139

Making one's way through the dense jungle of Old Japanese poetry and prose can be a daunting and discouraging task because of the complex writing systems used during the Asuka (550–710 CE) and Nara (710–789 CE) eras. The intricate script is a bewildering mix of Chinese characters employed for their semantic or phonetic value or as hints to other words—or even for word games. For the first time in English, this dictionary lists all 1,215 Chinese characters used as phonograms (ongana) or vernacular characters (kungana) in Old Japanese texts. It brings together a vast amount of data in relation to Chinese phonology: Old Chinese, Later Han Chinese, Middle Chinese, Sino-Japanese (both Go-on and Kan-on), Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, and Chu Nom. The entries contain examples from more than twenty Old Japanese texts showing how each character was used and in what context. Data from excavated wooden tablets, or slips (mokkan), is included as well as a chart of all the graphs and where they appear in the cited material. Students and scholars of Old Japanese writing and language and those more widely interested in the culture and history of pre-Heian Japan now have important linguistic and textual data at their fingertips arranged by character to help them decipher material from the ancient past.