Talk:蛙

Please take a look at Etymology 2. Since the historical kana spelling is かはづ, should the phonemic(?) shape have been something like /kahadu/? --Dine2016 (talk) 13:52, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * @Dine2016, done. :)  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 16:03, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

First citation
, I had a look at the Nihon Shoki source to see how that parses out.

Have a look here at Wikisource, and search the page for 十九年冬十月戊戌朔 to find the relevant section. Emphasis mine to highlight the specific sentence:

"十九年冬十月戊戌朔. 幸吉野宮. 時國樔人來朝之. 因以醴酒獻于天皇. 而歌之曰. 伽辭能輔珥. 豫區周■菟區利. 豫區周珥. 伽綿蘆淤朋濔枳. 宇摩羅珥. 枳虚之茂知■勢. 磨呂俄智. 歌之既訖. 則打口以仰咲. 今國樔獻土毛之日. 歌訖即撃口仰咲者. 蓋上古之遣則也. 夫國樔者. 其爲人甚淳朴也. 毎取山菓食. 亦煮蝦蟆爲上味. 名曰毛濔. 其土自京東南之. 隔山而居于吉野河上. 峯嶮谷深. 道路狹■. 故雖不遠於京. 本希朝來. 然自此之後. 屡參赴以獻土毛. 其土毛者栗菌及年魚之類焉."

As Chinese, this uses the term. There's nothing here that uses either the kanji 蛙 nor anything phonetic for kaperu.

The NKD entry uses a specific kundoku version of the Chinese sentence, specifically from the, referring to an edition of the Nihon Shoki from 1375, given as (emphasis again mine):

"亦蝦蟆(カヘル)を煮て上(よ)き味と為"

This is problematic on a number of levels.


 * is used in Chinese to mean, which fits the meaning of the text. The Middle Chinese phonetic value was , the Japanese on'yomi are either yaku or eki, and the kun'yomi are mata or de mo.
 * is used in Chinese to mean . The Middle Chinese phonetic values were  and .  Japanese on'yomi of kō / ka and ba / ma / baku.  Japanese kun'yomi of hamaguri and gama / buto / kuku.
 * This edition is from 1375.

So the phonology doesn't line up at all, and we have no clear basis for how or why -- or even if -- 亦蝦蟆 or 蝦蟆 were actually pronounced as kaperu in the Old Japanese text.


 * As an aside -- I confess I've had growing reservations about including Nihon Shoki and Kojiki first-citations in our etymology sections for yamato kotoba, due to the inconsistencies and uncertainties of the kun'yomi for these -- at least, when deriving from text sections written in kanbun.

For this specific entry, I'm inclined to discount the Nihon Shoki source -- it's the wrong kanji, and we can't confirm the pronunciation.

What do you think? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 20:07, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * : may just be . Some words are spelled based off their Chinese semantics. For instance,, was first cited to Shoki with the sense of mentally stressful and was spelled , but was pronounced kurusiki1, via it's . This is probably why kaperu is spelled this way. Chuterix (talk) 02:59, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The problem with attestations in the Kojiki or Nihon Shoki is that many of them are from kanbun, where the kun'yomi is based on kundoku versions of the texts from much later -- around the 1300s or so. If we can find attestations in the Kojiki or Nihon Shoki based on man'yōgana phonetic spellings (such as for OJP paya spelled as 波夜), then we are on much firmer ground.
 * Since we only have 蝦蟆 in the Nihon Shoki, and this spelling is not phonetic, we cannot use this as attestation for any kapyeru pronunciation. We can say that the Nihon Shoki includes the word 蝦蟆, and that this is traditionally read as kaeru, based on the kundoku edition of the Nihon Shoki from 1375.
 * FWIW, I just did a quick survey of the MYS, and I found no instances of かへる spelled out phonetically for the "frog; toad" sense. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 19:42, 5 December 2022 (UTC)