Why does 京 as a sound component seem to suggest the pronunciation 'liang' in a number of characters?

[lechuan]

I noticed that 京 seems to be a sound component in a number of characters pronounced liang.

 

For example: 凉 晾 谅 椋 涼 綡 辌

 

Does anyone know if this character may have once been pronounced liang? Or any reason for this pattern? 

[Guest realmayo]

This is what it says in Wenlin:

 

    Phonetic in 景 jǐng, 鲸 jīng, 惊 jīng, and also in 亮 liàng, 凉 liáng (Karlgren says there was Archaic *kl- or *gl-).

 

 

[OneEye]

Yeah, sound components like 京 are taken by many scholars as evidence that there were probably consonant clusters in Old Chinese. Most reconstruct it as *kr- rather than *kl- or *gl-. But essentially, some syllables dropped the k (and the r became an l) and some dropped the r (and the k became a j in Mandarin). The same thing happens with 各, which shows up in 路, 絡, 洛, etc.

[lechuan]

@realmayo Thanks! Didn't realize Wenlin had that kind of information in there. I tried out Wenlin when I picked it up as part of the Cantonese kickstarter, but the Windows 95 interface made it frustrating to use; I'll give it another go.

 

@OneEye Fascinating! I previously was using Heisig for character learning, which pretty much ignored all pronunciation and sound components, so it's fascinating to find the extra information present in today's character. Looking forward to the first cut of Outlier and how the data could be used for mainstream learning tools (ie. as a value-add plugin for flashcard programs (ie. Anki, Skritter), a "Learn Chinese Characters" book (similar to McNaughton's), as part of the Character tab in "Pleco", etc).

[Guest realmayo]

Wenlin lets you click on a link to see a list of all characters which use whatever character you're looking at as a component. I found that really helpful when learning the characters: every time I learned a new character I'd check to see if there were any common ones I could learn that used it as a component.

[imron]

20 minutes ago, lechuan said:

Looking forward to the first cut of Outlier

The first cut of Outlier has already been released.

[lechuan]

Curious. I have the Outlier Dictionary installed in Pleco, but I can only see entries when I browse the dictionary. They don't show up in standard search results

[imron]

I think there's a setting somewhere to configure which dictionaries show up in search results.

[lechuan]

Aha! Thanks @imron, turns out I was using a custom dictionary group that was skipping a lot of the dictionaries.

[laogui]

Coincidentally I made a similar observation last night.  I had been looking for cold noodles and came across a restaurant advertising 凉面，凉皮 and thought it should be 'jing mian' 'jing pi' until I checked Pleco.  In fact the 凉皮 was really good!  Most suitable as summer arrives in Suzhou.

老鬼