Talk:火

Mandarin hypercorrection of initial /h/ to /f/

According to w:Hypercorrection, a common Taiwanese pronounce of /f/ as /h/ causes 火 to be hypercorrected to fuo3, especially in the Hakka population. Can this be confirmed? Rod (A. Smith) 19:33, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Eh, I doubt it. My mom's Chaozhou (it's so similar to Hokkien, or Taiwanese, to the point where it's like Portuguese and Spanish or English and German; you can look it up) and I don't know how their Romanizing system works, but she said it was something like "dot huai" and nothing that had to do with an F or H at all.

Ngau yuk means beef in Cantonese. But some people say au yuk. And ngaa is teeth, but people also say aa. I notice this on the radio all the time... not to be racist or anything, but I note it's usually natives from Hong Kong who talk like that.

But I don't think that it should be included, even if it is true... it's too much slang and not the formal term. Even English slang terms are frowned upon, and I think they're only added because United States is a superpower and all that jazz. I don't see slang included for other languages. Bribes 16:04, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Also "fiery"?

Can this also mean "fiery" in Mandarin? 71.66.97.228 06:54, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Japanese etymology

Hello, is the etymology for Japanese ひ reconstructed? If so, shouldn't we add asterisks signaling the uncertainty of the forms presented? Baloug (talk) 02:35, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

• The phonetic shift from initial /p/ to /h/ is well researched. See also w:Old Japanese#Consonants. The initial /f/ is certainly corroborated by writers in multiple other languages and scripts, so that at least is not reconstruction. In my past studies, initial /p/ had been presented to me as historical fact rather than reconstruction, but reading around now, I see that it is not so settled. Feel free to add the * for the /p/. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 05:02, 3 April 2016 (UTC)