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| The phonetic element is a small puzzle. Formally, 丩 is there for its sound rather than its sense — but its own meaning of binding and entangling sits so comfortably next to a character meaning "to arrest" that the pairing is hard to read as pure accident. Standard analyses classify it as phonetic only, and the resemblance is best treated as a resonance rather than as part of the character's construction. | The phonetic element is a small puzzle. Formally, 丩 is there for its sound rather than its sense — but its own meaning of binding and entangling sits so comfortably next to a character meaning "to arrest" that the pairing is hard to read as pure accident. Standard analyses classify it as phonetic only, and the resemblance is best treated as a resonance rather than as part of the character's construction. |
| A modern reader will find the phonetic claim hard to credit, because two thousand years of sound change have pulled the two characters apart. In Mandarin, 丩 is ''jiū'' and 收 is ''shōu''. In Korean they are 구 (''gu'') and 수 (''su''). Nothing in either pair suggests a shared sound. | |
| The connection is easier to see further back. In Middle Chinese the two were ''kjuw'' and ''syuw'' — an identical rhyme, differing only in the initial consonant. That difference then widened as each language went its own way, and Mandarin added a further twist by palatalizing ''k'' before a front glide, turning the ''k'' of 丩 into a ''j''. The rhyme that once made the pairing obvious is still there underneath; it is the beginnings of the syllables that drifted. | |
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| Old Chinese reconstructions give 收 two readings, distinguished by tone, with the second corresponding to the noun sense of a harvest as opposed to the verb sense of gathering one. This distinction was lost as the tone system evolved, and Mandarin has a single reading today. | Old Chinese reconstructions give 收 two readings, distinguished by tone, with the second corresponding to the noun sense of a harvest as opposed to the verb sense of gathering one. This distinction was lost as the tone system evolved, and Mandarin has a single reading today. |
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| * [[Shinjitai]] | * [[Shinjitai]] |
| * [[Simplified Chinese characters]] | * [[Simplified Chinese characters]] |