Ancient Chinese spoken language?

[Guest 北府]

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' date=' 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?[/quote']

北京4000年前或许不是中国的一部分，但3000年前肯定是属于中国的。

在周代，那里是燕－－臣服于周的侯爵的封地。同时，燕王室也是周文王－－周第一代君主的后裔。

事实上，三千年前，中国的领土向北已经达到朝鲜半岛北部，现在的北朝鲜土地，3000年前的统治者是一个被称颂至今的贤人－－萁子

明代初期，朝鲜将军李成桂臣服于明，为中国皇帝服务，皇帝朱元璋将他封为朝鲜王。

并将朝鲜半岛北部赐予他以奖励李成桂为明所做的贡献

[Guest 北府]

my point of view is that not which dialect is the closest to ancient hanyu' date=' 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)[/quote']

we can do it but we'll never be sure that we have reconstructed the true ancient hanyu.

like people thought that 恐龙's skin is cover with 鳞片。but finally people find some 化石 that tell us it is cover with feather.

and,we'll never find 化石 of ancient hanyu.right ?

of course ,if someone make a time machin……

[Guest greenpine]

yes, i m well aware of that, it is impossible to capture the 100% truely authentic ancient hanyu, but we can capture all of this crucial pronouciation features, there were regulations that stayed constant over the years, dyansty to dynasty, place to place, hanyu or any language can sound a little different, but the foundation should stay constant, what we can do is to reestablish that foundation, regain lost pronounciation elements and etc ...

[Quest]

In Cantonese the ear is "yee"(+mandarin "er"). In some dialects, I is also "I", while in others it is "ngan". Then the eye in Cantonese is "ngan", too. Wood is "moo" in Mandarin. Are these the foundation of human languages?

[pazu]

北府兄, we are 自家郎. I also have the blood of Chaozhao though I feel ashamed that I don't know much about the place and the language. I have also heard that Teochew is one of the oldest form of Chinese, even older than Cantonese.

Anyway, do you still drink Kungfu Tea at home?

[pazu]

And here's a link:

http://cstc.lib.stu.edu.cn/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=716

瑞典漢學家高本漢曾經說過這樣的話：“汕頭話是現今中國方言中最古遠、最特殊的。”(見《中國語言學研究》，賀昌群中譯本)

[Guest 北府]

北府兄' date=' we are 自家郎. I also have the blood of Chaozhao though I feel ashamed that I don't know much about the place and the language. I have also heard that Teochew is one of the oldest form of Chinese, even older than Cantonese.

Anyway, do you still drink Kungfu Tea at home?[/quote']

我非常喜欢喝茶，只要有时间，叫上几个朋友，一边泡茶，一边讨论工作、时事、历史，是潮州人一大乐事。

有一点相信很多人误会了，kongfu tea means 工夫茶 but bot 功夫茶 it has nothing to do with “功夫” 。工夫means that u have to do many steps and pay quite a long tame for joining it.

[Guest 北府]

In Cantonese the ear is "yee"(+mandarin "er"). In some dialects, I is also "I", while in others it is "ngan". Then the eye in Cantonese is "ngan", too. Wood is "moo" in Mandarin. Are these the foundation of human languages?

i found children call their mother "mama" all over the world.

why?

perphas its true all of us came from africa

[pazu]

我非常喜欢喝茶，只要有时间，叫上几个朋友，一边泡茶，一边讨论工作、时事、历史，是潮州人一大乐事。

有一点相信很多人误会了，kongfu tea means 工夫茶 but bot 功夫茶 it has nothing to do with “功夫” 。工夫means that u have to do many steps and pay quite a long tame for joining it.

But just made a search on Google.com, it seems to have more results of "功夫茶" than "工夫茶". And isn't it correct to say, 這很考功夫? (a task with many steps to finish). I think both are correct. Anyway, whatever the truth, I found my Kungfu better after drinking Gongfu Cha.

[pazu]

In Cantonese the ear is "yee"(+mandarin "er"). In some dialects' date=' I is also "I", while in others it is "ngan". Then the eye in Cantonese is "ngan", too. Wood is "moo" in Mandarin. Are these the foundation of human languages?[/quote']

i found children call their mother "mama" all over the world.

why?

perphas its true all of us came from africa

Japanese call their mom "haha" (母: はは) , or o-kaa-san (お母さん：おかあさん）.

And from what I've heard from the TVB's drama, Chinese seemed to call their mom "娘親" or just "娘~~~".

[Quest]

You can say mom/mother/mama in English. There are formal terms for mother as well as spoken terms in most languages. 娘亲, 母亲 are formal. I suspect that people in the past used 妈/妈妈, too.

[ala]

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

Same with Shanghainese and most other Wu dialects. You can 喫香烟 (smoke- chich shanyi), 喫水 (drink water- chich si), 喫茶 (drink tea- chich zwu), 喫饭 (eat food- chich vei)... you 喫 your opponent's game pieces, and you can even famously 喫生活 (eat life = get beaten into pulp, chich sanwo). Historically, the character 喫 just means "to consume" or "take"... it doesn't differentiate eating/drinking/smoking....

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.

Actually, early Tang Dynasty didn't have that many tones because it had voiced consonants (something neither Mandarin nor Cantonese has today). 9 tones was definitely not the norm in ancient Chinese. Today some Min dialects and all Wu dialects continue to have systematic voiced consonants (lowering the tone number; most low Cantonese tones were once voiced initials). Cantonese has done a pretty good job in keeping its finals though.

I cannot imagine that Tang Dynasty language sounded like Teochew. Even if Teochew may be very close to Tang, the style of speaking (namely the crassness in Teochew) is bound to be different. One can't say, "listen to Teochew...., the Tang Court spoke like that too.."

[Guest LittleBuddhaTW]

Unless something like the Rosetta Stone is found for pronunciation, it is virtually impossible to reconstruct the sounds of ancient Hanyu ... the best we can do is guess. The biggest problem we have is with the tones. Although dialects like Cantonese and Hokkien still retain the "ru" (entering) tone, it is not necessarily the same as that used back in the Tang Dynasty. There's just no way of knowing.

As far as how far you can go back in time and still be able to communicate in Mandarin, probably sometime in the mid to late-Ming Dynasty. There are some vernacular novels from that time period that are very close to Mandarin, with the only major differences being that they still use quite a bit of classical grammar and articles, and some of the vocabular is a bit archaic, such as saying 快活, which at least in Taiwan, I've never heard. But basically, it's understandable.

[Guest greenpine]

guess there is no point at focusing on recapture the "true" sound, because ancient covers a long period of time and from time to time, sound varies, but what makes differ ancient from contemporary is that ancient is more enriched with ways of pronouncing. i support that at least we try to recover as much of those ways or forms as possible, i m happy as long as decent amount of those ways of pronounciation is recovered, i won't bet on getting the true sound cos there is none.

[nnt]

my point of view is that not which dialect is the closest to ancient hanyu' date=' 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)[/quote']

There is another "dialect" which scholars find even more similar to ancient Chinese than cantonese is the 汉越 (Hán-Việt) which is the Vietnamese pronunciation of Chinese characters. The Hán-Việt is not Vietnamese language, it is Vietnamese pronunciation of Chinese characters, the same way Koreans and Japanese have their own pronunciation of Chinese characters. When Vietnam became definitely independent after 939, the official language (used in official documents and litterature) remained classical Chinese characters until the beginning of 20th century. One of the best ways of reciting Tang poems (respecting all the tone rules) is to recite them Vietnamese way!

[skylee]

nnt, I find your post very refreshing. Thanks.

[Guest Shao]

I discussed about mandarin and cantonese with chinese friends before. We made some theories... cantonese maybe is closer to anicent chinese languages. mandarin is blended with north/central asian tongues like mongolians, manchurians, and turks. mongolians just invaded china and pulled chinese southward. mongolians and other barbarians tried to speak "real" chinese language, but ended up creating mandarin. (shrugs)

Japanese and Korean are very similar to both Mandarin and Cantonese.

[1%homeless]

Japanese and Korean are very similar to both Mandarin and Cantonese.

If I recall correctly, Japanese isn't related to Chinese.

People have forgotten Tibetan. Tibetan is related to Chinese. Since Ancient Tibetan writing is more phonetic, that is another thing to account for reconstruction of ancient pronunciation.

Also, there are theories that Old Chinese didn't even have tones. One other sketchy theory is that it actually even had a bit of inflection.

There is another "dialect" which scholars find even more similar to ancient Chinese than cantonese is the 汉越 (Hán-Việt) which is the Vietnamese pronunciation of Chinese characters. The Hán-Việt is not Vietnamese language, it is Vietnamese pronunciation of Chinese characters, the same way Koreans and Japanese have their own pronunciation of Chinese characters. When Vietnam became definitely independent after 939, the official language (used in official documents and litterature) remained classical Chinese characters until the beginning of 20th century. One of the best ways of reciting Tang poems (respecting all the tone rules) is to recite them Vietnamese way!

I disagree with this. What if the Thais used Chinese characters? Would that just be as close to ancient Chinese? Languages that borrow the writing system of another language barely ever use the pronunciation of the language. If that were the case, Korean and Japanese would resemble Chinese a whole lot more. Besides, how would you know how to pronounce Han-Viet in classical times when it didn't use a phonetic writing system?

[nnt]

What I said is not only my opinion, it is those of scholars (contemporary Vietnamese scholars for example).

If you can read Vietnamese, I recommend you the article "Lối đọc chữ Hán" (How to read Chinese characters in Hán Việt) by Lê Ngọc Trụ, published in Trần Văn Chánh's "Từ Điển Hán-Việt" (古今漢越語詞典)by Nhà Xuất Bản Trẻ Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh (1999).

Chinese linguists like Wang Li (王力) have also studied the relations between ancient Chinese, Hán Việt and Vietnamese language.

[1%homeless]

Well... I did a little more research and they did have another script called chu nom... http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chunom.htm

From the website:

"When adapting the Chinese characters, the inventors of Chữ-nôm borrowed many Chinese words and adapted that pronunciations to Vietnamese phonology."

So... I wasn't completely wrong. ;) It's borrowed Chinese words that are helpful for ancient chinese pronunciation. But it gets complicated because they adapt the pronunciation to Vietnamese phonology. I might investigate this further, too bad I can't read Vietnamese. Is there a book that talks about chinese written in chu nom? It is possible that there is a rosetta stone for Middle Chinese pronunciation.

Here is a book, but I'm not sure if they take in account of chu nom evidence:

http://www.ubcpress.ca/search/title_book.asp?BookID=1496

From what I still gather, Vietnamese isn't related to the Sino-Tibetan family. It is supossedly related to the AustroAsiatic family. But I have doubts about that too.