Pronunciation of 丂

[Gharial]

Harbaugh has this as kao3 and the head of one of his etymological trees, whilst Wieger has it as qiao3 and the head of one of his phonetic series. Meanwhile MBDG for example lists both pronunciations, but that seems as unhelpful as helpful!

I've looked ahead in each work and can see some sort of interplay with 老 / 耂 (+ 丂) > 考 , but delving too deep makes my tender little nose bleed!

[trien27]

Harbaugh has this as kao3

This is why: ㄎ k From 丂 kǎo which is actually derived from 考.

"qiao" was maybe a later sound change, when 丂 is a part of characters.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo#Origin_of_the_letters

http://www.byvoid.com/blog/pa-origin/

[chaxiu]

Interesting....

Wenlin spits out:

************

丂 [qiǎo] (component: 'breath, sigh'; phonetic in 考號巧朽)

"A symbol analogous to that of 氣 etc." --Karlgren.

考 [kǎo]...

From 耂(老 lǎo) 'old' and 丂 qiǎo phonetic.

************

Harbaugh

考 {kǎo] Old 老（phonetic,abbreviated) and obstructed breath 丂......

[Gharial]

Thanks for the replies. I was rather holding out (with whatever logic I was forming in my bonce) for 丂 as qiao3 (rather than kao3) to head the section of the dictionary-listing I'm compiling, and the stuff you've provided Chaxiu is the clincher for me!

[Hofmann]

Most of its homophones in Middle Chinese 考攷栲槁祰洘燺䯪薧 are kao3.

[manjuniyalma]

According to Wikitionary, this character has three pronunciations in Mandarin:

kǎo (kao3), qiǎo (qiao3), yú (yu2)

[Gharial]

I saw the yu pronunciation on MBDG, but that would seem the odd one out in terms of any phonetic grouping (series, tree or whatever). Still, I'm no expert on older forms of Chinese!