Does 左様なら (sayōnara) have Chinese roots?

Question

A related question: What does さようなら (左様なら) have to do with "left"?

The English-language A.Word.A.Day list this week is doing a "Words borrowed from Japanese" theme; today's word was sayonara. The etymology cited there says:

From Japanese sayonara (goodbye), short for sayo naraba (if it is to be that way), from sayo (thus) + naraba (if it be), ultimately from Chinese. Earliest documented use: 1863.

This feels a bit off to me. I also happened upon this source cited in the other answer, and another source briefly discussing the history of 左様; neither mentions anything specifically about Chinese.

My instincts tell me that both さ and なら are "native" Japanese words/constructions (よう feels more like an 音読み), which would completely remove Chinese from the etymology as the characters would be a "back-formation" rather than a Chinese borrowing. I also didn't see anything in my Chinese dictionary for 左様 or 然様, though it's possible the word was borrowed to Japanese and then lost in Chinese.

Answer 1

Let's dive into this etymology.

(My reference, unless otherwise stated, is Shogakukan's 国語大辞典. I've got a dead-tree copy, and there's also a decent online version available for free via Kotobank. Note that Kotobank's layout is a bit confusing for terms spelled with kanji that have multiple readings.)

Sense development

• さようなら
  Listed here as first appearing in texts from around 1742. Derived as a shortening of さようならば.

• さようならば
  Listed here as first appearing in texts from around the late 1500s, early 1600s, as a conjunction. The meaning was as expected from its parts: [さよう]{like that, that way} + [ならば]{if it be}. The "goodbye" sense appears later, cited to a text from 1791.

→ We can surmise that the "goodbye" sense for either form probably showed up in the early 1700s.

Derivation of the parts

• さよう
  First cited in the 伊勢【いせ】物語【ものがたり】 (The Tales of Ise) of the early 900s.
  This is a compound of さ ("that", medial distal marker, cognate with modern そ) + よう ("way, manner, appearance").

  • さ
    First appears in the Nara period (710–794) with the form さて. The shorter さ then appears from the Heian period (794–1185). Modern そう was formerly さう, and this さ may be the first component of that.
    Commonly spelled 然 in references. While cognate with the そ in words like そこ・それ・そなた etc., the そ version was used for physical and concrete things, while さ was used for abstract and psychological things.
    Note that the character 然 is borrowed from Chinese, but the reading sa is purely Japanese. 然 in Middle Chinese was read as something like //ȵiᴇn// instead, resulting in the modern Japanese on'yomi of zen.
  • よう
    Commonly spelled 様 in references. This is the only component of this phrase that derives from Chinese, specifically from earlier glyph form 樣 ("appearance; form; look").
    [In]{ } Middle Chinese when this was first borrowed into Japanese, the pronunciation was probably something like //jɨɐŋ// (the "j" here represents a sound like "y" in English; reconstructed based on linguistic research into sound changes and sound correspondences). The historical kana spelling in Japanese is やう, representing how it was probably first pronounced in Japanese: //jau//. (We see the same //au// → //oː// shift here as we saw above with さう.)

• ならば
  The term さよう is a 形容動詞【けいようどうし】 or "-na adjective". The -na modifier particle in modern Japanese comes from older attributive (noun-modifying) なる, which comes from a contraction of even older に + ある. This なる developed some time in the Heian period when 形容動詞【けいようどうし】 were first used.
  [The]{ } ならば in さようならば, the oldest form of this term, is this older なる for -na adjectives, conjugated into the conditional or hypothetical form.

  • In modern Japanese, the conditional / hypoethetical is created by adding a ば onto the conditional / hypothetical verb stem, which ends in -e (sometimes with an extra -r- in the middle). Consider 行【い】く → 行けば, or 食【た】べる → 食【た】べれば. This -e stem evolved from the ancient / classical 已然形【いぜんけい】 or "realis conjugation" which expressed something that is or could be real, used in subjunctive or suppositional constructions.
  • In ancient Japanese, the conditional / hypothetical could be formed using the -e stem, or also by using the -a stem -- also called the 未然形【みぜんけい】 or "irrealis conjugation" which expressed something that isn't real. This is the same as the modern -a verb stem used for negatives.
    ([There]{ } seems to have been some subtlety of meaning differentiating the -eba usage from the -aba usage, but I haven't yet read a fuller exploration of that topic.)

Update: I've learned a bit more about classical Japanese since I wrote the strikethrough portion above. 😄

• In classical usage, the -eba ending was a conditional, a bit like English "because". This uses the classical 已然形【いぜんけい】 or "realis conjugation", talking about something that has happened or is assumed will happen.

  • 「XXXす[れ]{●}[ば]{●}、YYY...」 means "because you're doing XXX, then YYY".
  • 「XXXへ行[け]{●}[ば]{●}、YYY...」 means "because you're going to XXX, then YYY".

• Meanwhile, the -aba ending was a hypothetical, a bit like English "if". This uses the classical 未然形【みぜんけい】 or "irrealis conjugation", talking about something that hasn't happened (maybe not yet, maybe never will).

  • 「XXX[せ]{●}[ば]{●}、YYY」 means "if you do XXX, then YYY".
  • 「XXXへ行[か]{●}[ば]{●}、YYY」 means "if you go to XXX, then YYY".

Conclusion

The only piece with any Chinese derivation is 様【よう】. The best interpretation of the etymology given in A Word A Day is that it was somewhat scrambled, and the "ultimately from Chinese" portion wound up in the wrong place in the sentence.

Addendum

Part of my family background is from Minnesota. When I was first learning Japanese and was taught the background meaning of さようなら, I realized it basically parses out to "well, if that's the way it's going to be" -- which somehow seems like a really Minnesotan way of saying "goodbye".

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Please comment if the above does not address your question, and I can edit to update.

Answer 2

I agree with @MichaelChirico and @Earthliŋ♦. Let me add a different viewpoint.

To say goodbye we often use many variant versions of "sayonara" such as:

• じゃーね
• それじゃーね
• それならね
• さらば

These have basically the same original meaning of "さようなら". Direct meaning is "Since that is the case, (let's call it a day)" or something like that. I think it's also similar to "then".

I have been very interested in whether there are people other than Japanese who use such "then"-like phrases to say goodbye. 再见, the Chinese goodbye, is exactly the same as "See you again".

So I'm not sure that 左様 is Chinese origin but the culture to use "then"-like phrase as goodbye is probably Japanese origin.

Answer 3

I also feel that only 様【よう】 could somehow be viewed as "ultimately from Chinese", but the other parts, namely 然【さ】 (now usually written with ateji 左) and なら, are of Japanese origin. Thus it would seem that the phrase さようなら is "ultimately Japanese".