Talk:穗

hūi / huì pronunciations
The character '穗' may have a secondary/vernacular/obsolete/special reading (and written form) as 'hūi' in Min Nan POJ & 'huì' in Mandarin Pinyin that we don't currently list. On its face, this reading seems incredibly likely to me as a common mistake, because the phonetic component of the character,, is read/written as hūi (huī) in Min Nan POJ/Tailo and huì in Mandarin Pinyin. (I remember being very pleased with myself when I read this character correctly for the Putonghua Proficiency Test in 2015 after having learned the character in my textbook in the preceding semester as the abbreviation for Canton.)

In 廣韻, the character '穗' is listed under 徐醉切，音遂, but then again so is '彗'.

I have (1) one piece of evidence from 2017 that '穗' has a known pronunciation as 'hūi' in Min Nan in the context of 瑞穗 and (2) one piece of evidence from fifty years before in 1967 that '穗' has the correlating 'huì' pronunciation in Mandarin (again in the context of 瑞穗): (1) unsourced claims on Min Nan Wikipedia &  (I have attempted to follow up on this at - see how my Taiwanese is progressing!) and (2) the Britannica World Atlas from 1967 which on p58 gives the spelling for  as 'Juihui'. It looks like most of names for the locations on the island are being spelled with Postal Romanization style Mandarin- for instance 'Keelong' is spelled 'Chilung'.

'瑞穗' itself is derived from phonetic matching to, a pre-Japanese name. In Japanese, we have "Kun: ほ (ho, 穗)", but that pronunciation is seemingly not used in the pronunciation for '瑞穗' (I don't know Japanese). Chinese and Japanese Wikipedia have pages for '瑞穗金融集團' and '瑞穗實業銀行' (rendered 'Mizuho'), both of which use the ずほ reading. Japanese Wikipedia uses both Go-on and Kan-on as legitimate readings for '瑞穗': "ずいすい / みずほ[1]（慣用読み） 小川琢治編　『市町村大字讀方名彙』　成象堂、大正十四年、387頁. " I don't really understand this information very well.

I also have evidence that there may have been some questions about the pronunciation of '穗' (1) in Mandarin in Mainland China and (2) in Mandarin in Taiwan. (1) In the《普通話异讀詞审音表初稿和本国地名审音表初稿》 from 1957, the pronunciation of the '穗' in '' in Guizhou was decided as 'ㄙㄨㄟˋ' as seen on page 30 of《中国语文》1957年10月 总第64期, column 2. Why did they bring it up? Note: The Britannica World Atlas from 1967 p58 gives the spelling for '三穗' as 'Sansui'. (2) '穗' is also mentioned in the 國語一字多音審訂表 to be pronounced as 'ㄙㄨㄟˋ'. I don't really understand this 審訂表 very well.

现代汉语词典第7版 page 1254 only has the 'suì' pronunciation for '穗'. 现代汉语规范词典第3版 page 1261 only has the 'suì' pronunciation for '穗'. The dictionary doesn't have one of its characteristic little reminder notes proscribing the Mandarin pronunciation 'huì' like I thought it would almost certainly have. 辞海第6版 page 2176 only has the 'suì' pronunciation for '穗'. It mentions on page 1935 that the name '三穗' comes from the local phrase '一禾三穗' (probably similar to ''). On page 1912, '瑞穗' is mentioned in the name of a Japanese company '瑞穗控股公司' (no pronunciation given). '穗' 'ㄙㄨㄟˋ'  瑞穗鄉 ㄖㄨㄟˋ ㄙㄨㄟˋ ㄒㄧㄤ

TL;DR It seems likely to me that hūi and huì may be vernacular pronunciations for '穗', especially when used in '瑞穗'.

--Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:24, 21 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Looks like 'Suī-huī' is a confirmed variant reading for 瑞穗. But should the 'huī' pronunciation be noted on the 穗 page? Am I reading this right?  --Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:58, 21 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Some entries do write . —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 01:25, 22 April 2019 (UTC)