Is it 尋日 or 琴日?
You have probably heard both pronunciations. And I personally use them both daily.
Since Cantonese doesn't have a robust written corpus (published written Cantonese) to search from, I decided to draw from lyrics:
🎵尋晚夜個上海婆鬧我...🎶
🎶尋晚響東急碰正個日本娃娃🎵
When typing, I actually only type 尋
My intuition is that 琴 is a more informal, colloquial version.
Phonologically speaking, 尋tsam contains the affricate/ts/ and is more complex than the 琴kam with the developmentally early /k/ sound (as in children learn to say the /k/ sound earlier than they learn the /ts/ sound). Unlike 今日 [gam yat] 聽日 [ting yat] that begin with /g/ and/t/, both developmentally early sounds, /ts/ is a difficult sound for a early learned word (we learn to say "yesterday" as a young child).
Therefore, I postulate that 琴日 is a corrupted/ derived version of 尋日.
Another test for this is, do TV news reporters say 尋 or 琴? Whichever one they say is likely more formal and the prestigious form. (I have to get on TVB.com and listen to the news now).
That is not to say one is better than the other, but the reason we choose one over the other might depend on the situation, age of the speaker, etc.
大家講野時用尋日定琴日? 打字時有冇preference? 有冇歌詞係寫"琴日"?
Comments
Post a Comment