Consonants of the Japanese /h-/ Series in <i>haiwaiqitan</i> (海外奇談): A Focus on the houyin-hekou (喉音合口) Type

<p>This paper investigates haiwaiqitan (海外奇談), a Japanese-Chinese transliteration, anthologized in wuqijingbu (吾妻鏡補) and assumed to reflect the Nagasaki dialect of the 18th century. This paper argues that the sounds of the Chinese characters, which are applied to transliterating in the document, are Wu. By analyzing them, this paper examines the consonants of the Japanese /h-/ series.</p><p>In haiwaiqitan, the consonants in /ha/ and /ho/ are mainly transliterated as the houyin-hekou (喉音合口, a guttural or glottal initial with a rounded medial or vowel) type, while those in /hi/, /hu/ and /he/ are mainly transliterated as the chunyin (唇音, a labial initial) type. In the wide range of Japanese-Wu transliteration documents, this paper confirms the relationship between different types of Chinese characters and the consonants of the Japanese /h-/ series, focusing on the positioning of the houyin-hekou type. The results are as follows:</p><p>(1) The chunyin type suggests that /h/ at that time was probably [ɸ].</p><p>(2) The houyin-kaikou (喉音開口, a guttural or glottal initial without a rounded medial or vowel) type suggests that /h/ was probably [h(ç)].</p><p>(3) The houyin-hekou type suggests that /h/ was probably in the intermediate state of de-labialization [ɸ]>[h]. With the help of modern Wu sounds, this paper presumes that the phonetic value of this intermediate state is [hw].</p><p>Accordingly, this paper concludes that haiwaiqitan reflects the de-labialization of the consonants of the Japanese /h-/ series that occurred in the Nagasaki dialect in the 18th century. At that time, the consonants in /hi/, /hu/ and /he/ mainly still maintained [ɸ], while those in /ha/ and /ho/ were in the intermediate state of de-labialization, and the phonetic value is [hw].</p>