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I looked up 塞 in my 漢和辞典, and I found four readings:

> 音：サイ、ソク
>
> 訓：とりで、ふさ・ぐ

What I noticed is that サイ is used when the kanji means とりで, and ソク is used
when the kanji means ふさぐ:

  * 「とりで」の意味： 要塞{ようさい}・[防塞]{ぼうさい}
  * 「ふさぐ」の意味： 閉塞{へいそく}・[逼塞]{ひっそく}

I noticed the same thing with 省. The reading セイ seems to be used when the
kanji means かえりみる, while ショウ is reserved for the other meanings.

What is the historical reason for this sort of correspondence? Does it mean 塞
was borrowed twice, with a different pronunciation and meaning? Was 塞 confused
with 寨, perhaps? What about 省?
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2012-10-22T03:50:08.263
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2012-11-09T12:21:41.520
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question
kanji etymology readings
Reading 塞 and 省: When on and kun readings go together
I can't be sure, but I would estimate that this is preserving the distinction
between the noun form and verb forms of the word. They operate in pretty
isolated spaces in the Japanese language (I can't speak toward their sino
roots).
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2012-11-09T06:23:54.543
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2012-11-09T06:23:54.543
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Ultimately the reason is the remnants of verbal morphology in Old Chinese.
(Recently every time I post on japanese.SE it seems to be about Old
Chinese...) Modern Chinese is a very low-morphology language, but
reconstructed Old Chinese had some derivational morphology which is
responsible for noun/verb pairs with different readings on the same character
(for instance, 長 has a verbal reading _zhang3_ and an adjectival reading
_chang2_ ).

Most reconstructions of Old Chinese posit a morpheme *-s which, among its
functions, nominalises a verb. Just as 塞 has the two readings サイ and ソク in
Japanese, it has two readings _coi3_ and _sak1_ in Cantonese (I use Cantonese
because, unlike Mandarin, it preserves the syllable final _-k_ which was still
present at the time the reading was borrowed into Japanese).

[Baxter's reconstruction](http://crlao.ehess.fr/docannexe.php?id=1200) of the
verb 塞 is * _s?ək_ , and the nominalised form (understood as _a built up
thing_ ) with the nominalising suffix is * _s?ək-s_. Middle Chinese sound
changes caused the verb to retain its coda, while in the form with the suffix,
the coda became a glide. As such, when these were borrowed into Japanese, they
already existed as a noun/verb pair differing in the coda.
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2012-11-09T12:21:41.520
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answer