Ancient Chinese spoken language?

[blob]

Hi there,

It is known that the chinese written character system has been around for many thousand years, although having been through many script evolutions. So, we can still read really ancient chinese text, though understanding its contents needs somewhat more effort, e.g. the book of changes, YiJing.

However, what I am curious about is how would the chinese spoken language would sound like during the early dynasties, say shang, or zhou.

I just wonder if they still speak the regional dialects then, like cantonese in the south then and mandarin in the northen bits.For some reason I'm not too sure about this. So, if we went back about to where beijing is 3000 years ago, and started speaking mandarin (with the grammar in the text at that time), do you think the people there would still understand me?

Cheers,

Blob

[Quest]

I am pretty sure they would not understand you. It doesn't really take that long for a language to change into a completely different language. Someone even suggested that Mandarin and Cantonese separated only 500 years ago, though I think it would have taken longer than 500 years. The fact that chinese didn't write the way they spoke it made it even harder to recapture the true spoken language(s) of ancient china.

btw, I dont think Beijing was part of China 3000 years ago, was it?

[holyman]

2000+yrs. they just celebrated founding of beijing some 25 centuries ago(or something like that) a few yrs back.

[blob]

Ahh.. forgot that beijing didn't exist at that time, but well, I really meant to say, what if I went back to the capital of china at that time and spoke modern-day sounding mandarin. Apparently, there is lots of research going on towards reconstructing the sounds made by people in old chinese (zhou dynasty) to middle chinese (those latter dynasties, e.g. song,sui, etc...).

Here's a simple explanation on the possible sounds that people in the past would have made reading chinese characters then:

http://fhpi.yingkou.net.cn/bbs/1951/messages/6187.html

Cheers

[Guest Anonymous]

The language most similar to ancient Chinese still in existence is Cantonese.

[Quest]

The language most similar to ancient Chinese still in existence is Cantonese.

I would doubt that. There are too many dialects to pick from, it's impossible to say which one is most similar.

[Amdir_Flassion]

The language most similar to ancient Chinese still in existence is Cantonese.

Depends on what you call ancient Chinese. But I think it'd be more correct to say that Cantonese has undergone the least changes in its dialect since the past. I read from a Cantonese phrasebook's intro that since the Tang Dynasty, Canto still retains 9 notes and the clipped constants, plus many of its other features.

In contrast to Mandarin, it underwent massive changes such as reducing the number of tones and removing the clipped constants like in Canto. Other dialects have changed quite a lot too.

I'm not talking about vocab (which changes often), but the essential aspects of how the dialect is spoken and heard.

[Quest]

If you just compare Cantonese to Mandarin, then it's safe to say that Cantonese is closer to ancient Chinese than Mandarin. However, these are just two of the numerous of Chinese dialects.

[blob]

What about the Hakka dialect? That language some claims seem to have retained lots of its original sounds too, or maybe I am wrong?

[Ian_Lee]

Actually in Guangdong itself there are at least dozens more dialects.

I still know a friend's mom speaking Dongguan dialect (the county just north of Shenzhen) which is completely unintelligible to me.

My father told me that not too long ago (I mean the beginning of last century), the village town which was just a couple of hill's distance away might speak a dialect that was totally different from his hometown's.

[Quest]

In Guangzhou's suburbs and country sides, a 1.5 hour bus ride (now 40 mins I think), people speak very different dialects already, barely intelligible if they speak fast. However, now since more and more city people purchase houses and properties in the suburbs, it's starting to change.

[pazu]

How about Teochew? THey don't even distinguish the difference of eating and drinking. You can only JEK DE! (drink tea!)

[smithsgj]

Does Cantonese make a distinction between eating and (non-tea-)drinking? (And smoking!!)

[skylee]

In Cantonese, people 食煙 (smoke), 食飯, 飲茶 (drink tea), 飲水 (drink water).

[roddy]

In Cantonese, people 食煙 (smoke), 食飯, 飲茶 (drink tea), 飲水 (drink water).

With chopsticks, I assume . . .

Roddy

PS. You know, I spend half my time thinking I should ask everyone to keep things more on topic, and the other half making posts like this. . .

[Amdir_Flassion]

In Cantonese, people 食煙 (smoke), 食飯, 飲茶 (drink tea), 飲水 (drink water).

Isn't that the same in Hokkien and Hakka as well? I definitely know 飲水 is the same in Hokkien.

[pazu]

Oh I think I 咬飯 in Cantonese.

[Quest]

Some would say "yak"饭 in Cantonese. 咬飯??

[Guest 北府]

抱歉在下的英文很差，只能用中文与诸君交流

希望不会给我们沟通带来问题。

可以肯定，古汉语发音与现在截然不同。这点可以从诗词上面看出来。

中国的诗与音乐结合非常紧密，很讲究韵律。所有的诗，在当时看到押韵。

然而很多诗现在读起来冰不押韵。由此可以肯定古汉语读音与现在不同。

我的家乡潮州，是华南一个历史悠久的城市。从建立至今1600多年。

那里的方言－－潮州话。是当今最古老的方言，保有很多古汉语（唐代）的发音、词汇、语法。

阁下有兴趣的话，潮州欢迎你的到来

I'll translate this one but don't expect it to become a habit. Roddy

My English isn't very good, so I can only use Chinese to communicate. I hope this doesn't cause too many problems.

We can be sure ancient and modern Chinese have different pronunciations. We can see this from poetry. Chinese poetry is closely related to music and places a lot of emphasis on rhyming. All poetry rhymed at the time it was written. However a lot of poetry doesn't rhyme when you read it today - which proves that current pronunciation isn't the same as in ancient times.

My hometown Chaozhou is an ancient city in the South of China, founded 1600 years ago. The local language, Chaozhouhua, is the oldest local language in current use and retains many ancient (Tang Dynasty) pronunciations, words and grammar.

If you are interested, you are welcome to visit. . .

Translation ends. Hope it was accurate enough

[Guest greenpine]

my point of view is that not which dialect is the closest to ancient hanyu, but mandarin is definitely one of the least if not the least similar.

if there is enough resources or fund, reconstructing ancient hanyu is very possible, what we can do is that pick out bits and pieces from dialects, compare and analyse and "execavate" all the ancient sounds that were lost in modern mandarin, 3 dialects that are essential would be 吳語(e.g. shanghaian),粵語(e.g.cantonian),閩語(e.g.hokkien)