Middle Chinese (traditional Chinese: 中古漢語; pinyin: zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ), or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (6th century - 10th century). Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most common Standard Mandarin Romanization system in use Bernhard Karlgren (1889 - 1978 was a Swedish sinologist, Philologist, and the founder of Swedish sinology as a scholarly discipline This article is about the Southern and Northern Dynasties in China. The Sui Dynasty ( 581 - 618 AD and in the undertaking of other construction projects including the reconstruction of the Great Wall. The Tang Dynasty ( Middle Chinese: dhɑng (June 18 618&ndashJune 4 907 was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by The Song Dynasty ( Wade-Giles: Sung Ch'ao was a ruling dynasty in China between 960&ndash1279 CE it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms The 6th century is the period from 501 to 600 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian / Common Era. The term "Middle Chinese", in contrast to Old Chinese and Modern Chinese, is usually used in the context of historical Chinese phonology, which seeks to reconstruct the pronunciation of Chinese used during these times. Old Chinese ( or Archaic Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese spoken from the Shang Dynasty ( Chinese Historical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past
Middle Chinese can be divided into an early period, generally called Early Middle Chinese, and a later period, Late Middle Chinese. The transition point between Early and Later Middle Chinese is thought to be during the Mid-Tang Dynasty and is indicated by the phonological developments. The Tang Dynasty ( Middle Chinese: dhɑng (June 18 618&ndashJune 4 907 was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by For example, in the rime book Qieyun, bilabial initials [p pʰ b m] characters are shown, but there were no labiodental initials like f and v, which could be found in Jiyun. This article is about a type of dictionary in ancient China For the type of Western reference work used in poetry see Rhyming dictionary. The Qieyun ( is a Chinese Rime dictionary, published in 601 CE during the Sui Dynasty. In Phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a Consonant articulated with both Lips The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds In Phonetics, labiodentals are Consonants articulated with the lower Lip and the upper Teeth. The Jiyun ( literally "Collected Rimes" is a Chinese Rime dictionary published in 1037 during the Song Dynasty. This indicates that a sound change in the pronunciation of Chinese had occurred. Sound change includes any processes of Language change that affect pronunciation ( phonetic change) or sound system structures ( Phonological change
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Reconstruction
The reconstruction between modern linguists may vary slightly, but they are minor differences, and fairly uncontroversial, so we could say the Middle Chinese phonology is fairly well understood and accepted. (Middle) Chinese is not written using an alphabetic script, therefore, sounds cannot be derived directly from writing. An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either The sounds of Middle Chinese must therefore be inferred from a number of sources:
- Modern languages. Just as Proto-Indo-European can be reconstructed from modern Indo-European languages, so can Middle Chinese be reconstructed (tentatively) from modern Sinitic languages (e. Spoken Chinese ( comprises many regional variants the largest of which are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. g. Beifanghua (Mandarin group), Wu, Min or Cantonese).
- Preserved pronunciation of Chinese characters in borrowed Chinese vocabulary surviving in non-Chinese languages such as Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese
- Classical Chinese poetry from the Middle Chinese period
- Transliterations of foreign words into Chinese characters. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ) formerly known under French colonization as Annamese ( see Annam) Chinese Poetry is the most highly regarded literary genre in China. Transliteration is known as yinyi ( in Chinese. While it is not uncommon to see foreign names left as they are in their original forms (for example in Latin For example, "Dravida" was translated by religious scribes into a series of characters 達羅毗荼 that are now read in Putonghua (Mandarin) as /ta35 luo35 phi35 thu35/ (Pinyin: Dáluópítú). Standard Mandarin, also known as Standard Spoken Chinese, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan This suggests that Mandarin /uo/ (Pinyin -uo) is the modern reflex of an ancient /a/-like sound, and that the Mandarin tone /35/ is a reflex of ancient voiced consonants. A tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words Both of these can in fact be confirmed through comparison among modern Chinese dialects.
- Rime books (or rime dictionaries). Ancient Chinese philologists devoted a great amount of effort in summarizing the Chinese phonetic system through rime or rhyme books. There was a profuse output of Chinese poetry during the Tang era, with a rigid verse structure that relied on the rime and tone of the final characters in lines of poetry. Chinese Poetry is the most highly regarded literary genre in China. Middle Chinese as embodied in rime books were a primary aid to authors in composing poetry. The 601 AD Qieyun rime dictionary is our earliest fixed record of the phonology of Chinese pronunciation, albeit without the aid of phonetic letters, but entries that are indexed under a rigorous hierarchy of tone, rime, and onset. The Qieyun ( is a Chinese Rime dictionary, published in 601 CE during the Sui Dynasty. Only fragments or incomplete copies were known until a chance discovery of a version from the Tang Dynasty in the caves of Dunhuang. The Tang Dynasty ( Middle Chinese: dhɑng (June 18 618&ndashJune 4 907 was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by Dunhuang ( also written as 燉煌 till early Qing Dynasty; is a City (pop Later expanded rime dictionaries such as the eleventh-century Song Dynasty Guangyun and Jiyun survive to the present day. The Guangyun ( literally "Broad/Extensive Rimes" is a Chinese Rime dictionary that was compiled from 1007 to 1011 under The Jiyun ( literally "Collected Rimes" is a Chinese Rime dictionary published in 1037 during the Song Dynasty. These are essentially extended versions of the Qieyun, and until the Dunhuang discovery, the Guangyun was the base from which Middle Chinese was reconstructed.
Reconstructed phonology
Middle Chinese had three types of stops: voiced, voiceless, and voiceless aspirated. Syllables could end with stops. Middle Chinese had more vowels than its descendants, such as /æ/, which merged into similar phonemes later on. Affricate and fricative sibilants had three levels of distinction as they do in Mandarin. Some Sinologists believe that Old Chinese or an early state of Middle Chinese originally had consonant clusters such as /dɹ/ which became retroflex sounds.
Further reading
- Chen, C. -Y. (2001). Tonal evolution from pre-Middle Chinese to modern Pekinese: three tiers of changes and their intricacies. Berkeley, CA: Project on Linguistic Analysis, University of California.
- Newman, J. , & Raman, A. V. (1999). Chinese historical phonology: a compendium of Beijing and Cantonese pronunciations of characters and their derivations from Middle Chinese. LINCOM studies in Asian linguistics, 27. Muenchen: LINCOM Europa. ISBN 3895865435
- Ulving, T. , & Karlgren, B. (1997). Dictionary of old and middle Chinese: Bernhard Karlgren's Grammata serica recensa alphabetically arranged. Orientalia Gothoburgensia, 11. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. ISBN 9173462942
- Pulleyblank, E. G. (1991). Lexicon of reconstructed pronunciation in early Middle Chinese, late Middle Chinese, and early Mandarin. Vancouver: UBC Press. ISBN 0774803665
- Pulleyblank, E. G. (1984). Middle Chinese: a study in historical phonology. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. ISBN 0774801921
See also
External links
- An Etymological Dictionary of Common Chinese Characters, William H. A rime table or rhyme table ( is a Syllable chart of the Chinese language, a significant advance on the Fanqie analysis used in earlier Baxter
- Introduction to Chinese Historical Phonology, Guillaume Jacques
- Historical Chinese Phonology/Philology at Technical Notes on the Chinese Language Dialects Dylan W. H. Sung
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