Re: 聽執笠 / 等執笠

I’ve come across at least two sources [regrettably don’t recall where they are] suggesting that 等 has both a literary and colloquial reading, being dang2 and ting3 respectively. The general idea of the following comes from one of the authors:

According to an established phonological rule, literary/colloquial pairs that have non-aspirate /b, d, g, gw, z/ versus aspirate /p, t, k, kw, c/ as an initial usually have a completely identical final. For instance,
bun6 伴侶, 同伴, 伙伴 / pun5 有伴, 做伴, 搭伴
daam6 淡定, 冷淡 / taam5 鹹淡
gan6 近來, 附近, 靠近 / kan5 好近, 行近啲
gwaang6 逛街, 逛公園 / kwaang3 出去逛吓
zang1 曾孫, 曾姓 / cang4 曾經, 也曾
Nearly all of such pairs have identical finals.

There are, of course, some exceptions, e.g. literary 皺 (皺紋) is spelt zau3 with a short-vowel /a/ whereas colloquial 皺 (皺皮) is spelt caau4 with a long-vowel /aa/. The divergence is nimimal. However, literary等 [dang2] and colloquial 等 [ting3] differ widely in the main vowel (a vs i). So most people fail to realize that 等 has a colloquial reading ‘ting3’ and have adopted 聽 for ting3.

In fact, 等 and 聽 are completely identical. I can’t see any difference in meaning though they might differ slightly in some usages.