Reconstruction talk:Proto-Japonic/munanki

Mistaken reconstruction

From older munagi, in turn thought to be a compound of 身 (mu, “body”, combining form) + なぎ (nagi, “long”, shift or alternative derivation from the same root as 長い (nagai, “long”)). See the entries at Nihon Jiten, Gogen Allguide.

There's a distant possibility that this initial む was in fact intended to be the moraic nasal ん, which was spelled む in older times. However, no other word I'm aware of is recognized as starting with the moraic nasal, so this theory seems unlikely. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:35, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Move to /muna(n)ki/? -- RESOLVED

@Chuterix, what basis is there for reconstructing this as /munaki/? MYS 3853 and 3854 have this as 武奈伎 (munagi₁). Granted, the 伎 is used ambiguously in man'yōgana for both ⟨gi₁⟩ and ⟨ki₁⟩, as we see in the table over at Wikipedia. However, from what I can find, for this particular term, all JA sources reconstruct this as ⟨munagi₁⟩.

Grepping ONCOJ for munag. (that's the literal string munag followed by a single character) produces only the two hits from the MYS. Grepping for munak. finds nothing at all.

Are you finding any sources that reconstruct this as ⟨munaki₁⟩ instead? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 16:57, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@Chuterix, looks like you moved the page again before I saved the above, removing the parentheses and resolving the issue. 😄 Cheers! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:00, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@Eirikr: It is Vovin (2021)'s translstion of Man'yoshū book 16 that he reads munaki1, citing Omodaka Hisataka's 万葉集注釈 (don't have access, but a snippet view of Omodaka's man'yoshu can be searched here). Vovin says:

"Some Japanese scholars read 武奈伎 'eel' as muna^ŋgî (Takeda 1957.11: 288), but in all WOJ and MJ examples there no evidence for -^ŋg-, which is apparently inspired by MdJ unagi (Omodaka 1977.16: 180-181). Thus following Omodaka's lead I read 武奈伎 'eel' as munakî. Note that the combined evidence from WOJ munakî and MJ munaki points toward PJN *munaki starting with *mu- and not *u- or *o-."

Only one website (短歌のこと) just inconclusively says "鰻 is not read as unagi, but munaki", without any details whatsoever (taken from some unknown source?); it's not clear if you can neccessary call it a "reliable source".

Nor am I aware of a MJ munaki.

It is possible the pR term borrowed from when there was MJ unagi. Chuterix (talk) 19:45, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Yonaguni

One speculates the development from PR to Yonaguni as *nnagi-ya > *nnazya > (fortition) nada. Kwékwlos (talk) 15:12, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Reconstruction

There's a bunch of Japanese dialects that have initial o-, and Ryukyuan has *Unagi, so could the Ryukyuan terms be a late borrowing into Japanese?

Otherwise I derive it from *mi-onaNki 'HON-eel', but this is speculative. @荒巻モロゾフ, if you're there, can you please chime in? This is particularly interesting. (Also, this shows OJ is not Latin to all Japonic) Chuterix (talk) 22:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)