linguoboy wrote:I found this listed in several authoritative sources including Unihan. Looks like there are two accepted pronunciations in contemporary Chinese (both Standard Chinese and Cantonese).
That's something I've noticed myself with a lot of different obscure characters, which is pretty confusing. I mean, if they're no longer used, why would they have set pronunciations? Are they "preconstructed" based on earlier pronunciations? But if the earlier pronunciations are reconstructed, that seems a bit paradoxical... or were they still used so recently that they already had established pronunciations in the modern Sinitic languages that could be documented before they ceased to be used? Or are they still used occasionally? Maybe in historical fiction or something if nowhere else? Sorry for bombarding you with questions (once again

), especially when I probably should be asking OldBoring instead... hopefully he'll see this and feel like responding.
vijayjohn wrote:Modern (Beijing) reading: yǐ
Preclassic Old Chinese: Łajʔ
Classic Old Chinese: Łáj
Western Han Chinese: láj
Eastern Han Chinese: źáj
Early Postclassic Chinese: źáj
Middle Postclassic Chinese: jáj
Late Postclassic Chinese: jáj
Middle Chinese: jé
Hmm, so what would it most likely have become if it was borrowed into Japanese? Would it be just /i/?
~
recidivism
横雨 (yokoame) - rain that falls sideways due to wind
A pretty obvious compound, but it's nice. I should be focusing on learning completely new words rather than new compounds, and
maybe some that are actually commonly used...
練 - white silk; to boil and scour raw silk (so that it becomes soft and white)
For the verbal meaning, Wiktionary just says "to boil and scour raw silk" but the Xinhua dictionary includes the part I put in parentheses. Not sure if boiling and scouring raw silk (whatever that even means in practice; I'm not a clothing manufacturer) could have an alternative outcome as well, but it doesn't really matter either way. Kinda sad that the modern meaning is apparently "to practise" rather than "white silk". I mean, having a specific word for white silk is pretty cool.