lexico
Chukchi Salmon
?C [umi; G. kai; K. kai] "sea" has phonetic 每 [G. mai; K. bai] "always; (graph) woman with head-dress."
/kai/ and /mai~bai/ are quite different in the initials, although they rhyme.
What is the cause of this discrepancy?
Possible histories of ?C readings are;
1. old reading /*hmai/ characters diverging into two classes of /hai/ and /mai/ characters.
2. old character reading of 澥 (< ?? [G. ke, ge; K. kai]) "sea of Bohai" being inherited by ?C
when it replaced the older Warring States character ??澥 > ?݊C.
In the second case, the Japanese interpretive reading /umi/ may be preserving the Archaic reading of ?C.
Even that Archaic word may have been borrowed into the Chinese language
from the language of an unknown sea-faring people, non-Chinese in origin.
Have you seen a kanji with a suspicious phonetic or reading?
/kai/ and /mai~bai/ are quite different in the initials, although they rhyme.
What is the cause of this discrepancy?
Possible histories of ?C readings are;
1. old reading /*hmai/ characters diverging into two classes of /hai/ and /mai/ characters.
2. old character reading of 澥 (< ?? [G. ke, ge; K. kai]) "sea of Bohai" being inherited by ?C
when it replaced the older Warring States character ??澥 > ?݊C.
In the second case, the Japanese interpretive reading /umi/ may be preserving the Archaic reading of ?C.
Even that Archaic word may have been borrowed into the Chinese language
from the language of an unknown sea-faring people, non-Chinese in origin.
Have you seen a kanji with a suspicious phonetic or reading?
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