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Sabbath Ambiguous Sabbath
Here's something I discovered while Wikipeding my way out from Rosh Hashanah: the Japanese word for "Sabbath", 安息日, has not one, not two, but three pronunciations.
- ansokubi
- ansokujitsu
- ansokunichi
You can see that they all pronounce 安息, the first two characters, ansoku: this means "rest" and is an independent word of its own. The difference lies in the pronunciation of the final character 日, "day". Wikipedia sez:
キリスト教関係者の間でも読み方が分かれているが、NHKでは「あんそくび」と読んでいる。
「文語訳聖書」、「口語訳聖書」、「新改訳聖書」では「あんそくにち」、「フランシスコ会訳聖書」では「あんそくじつ」、「新共同訳聖書」では「あんそくび」と振り仮名が振られている。
Even the Christian community is divided on the issue of pronunciation, but NHK pronounce it ansokubi.
In the Bungo yaku seisho 文語訳聖書 ["Literary-Tranlation Bible"], the Kōgo yaku seisho 口語訳聖書 ["Colloquial-Translation Bible"], and the Shinkai yaku seisho 新改訳聖書 ["Revised-Translation Bible"], it has the furigana ansokunichi; in the Furanshisuko-kai yaku seisho フランシスコ会訳聖書 ["Franciscan-Translation Bible"] it is ansokujitsu; and in the Shin kyōdō yaku seisho 新共同訳聖書 ["New Interconfessional Translation Bible"] it is ansokubi.
No doubt there is a lot of history going on there, but NHK have explained the reasoning behind their choice:
日本語では漢字2字のことばに「日」がつく名詞は、［～ビ］と発音することが多いので、一般向けの放送では［アンソクビ］と読んでいます。
＜例＞記念日 給料日 参観日 誕生日 定休日 旅行日 休刊日
In Japanese, when "日" comes after a two-kanji word it is usually pronounced -bi, and so we use ansokubi in broadcasts.
Examples: 記念日 kinenbi [anniversary], 給料日 kyūryōbi [payday], 参観日 sankanbi [visitation day, e.g. day when parents can go and watch their children's classes at school], tanjōbi [birthday] teikyūbi [regular holiday, e.g. of a store closed every Sunday], 旅行日 ryokōbi [day of travel], 休刊日 kyūkanbi [day of suspended publication, e.g. a planned day off for a newspaper]
Makes sense! There are exceptions that use nichi or jitsu instead, like jokeinichi 除刑日 ("day of suspended punishment", day during the Edo period when no punishments were carried out due to holidays or other calendrical events) and taisaijitsu 大祭日 (the year's biggest festival day at a given shrine) — but most of them are either directly related to the (continental) lunar calendar or Buddhism. I think it's fair to say that (a) commonly used and (b) culturally post-Meiji terms tend to end in -bi instead.
Incidentally, back during Christianity's first pass at Japan, the word for "Sabbath" was domingo (from the Portuguese for "Sunday"), and I believe that 主の日 ("Lord's day") has seen some use too.
L.N. Hammer:
L'shana tovah!
Not knowing that -bi after two kanji rule does explain some of my confusion over 日. And increases it at the same time.
(It was very odd to go from working on KKS 148 to Rosh Hashanah services. That may have not been the best activity for beforehand.)
---L.