Recordings of Middle Chinese pronunciation?

[OneEye]

I know Cambridge University recently released some recordings of Babylonian, and it got me wondering if anyone had made any recordings of reconstructed Middle Chinese. It would be interesting to hear, especially compared to the modern dialects. For instance, Tang poetry in the "original" pronunciation versus Mandarin, Cantonese, etc. today. So, anybody know if such recordings exist?

[Hofmann]

Look at this YouTube channel.

And I remember reading a poem in Pulleyblank's reconstruction here.

[OneEye]

Cool, thanks! I'll look through it.

[surangamas]

Hi Hoffman, where can you find materials about Pulleyblank's reconstruction of Middle Chinese tones? Just like the poem you attached to your post,thanks.

[Hofmann]

Oh hello. Sorry for the late reply. Pullyblank's columns here.

[anonymoose]

I think you're unlikely to find any recordings of Middle Chinese because, according to Wikipedia, Middle Chinese refers to the language spoken between the 6th and 10th century. On the other hand, according to Wikipedia again, the first device able to record arbitrary sound (speech) wasn't invented until 1857.

[OneEye]

Anonymoose, I can't tell if you're joking or if you really think we're asking for 1200 year old recordings. But just in case, re-read, and know the keyword is "reconstructed." Similarly, those recordings of Babylonian are not newly discovered recordings from 4000 years ago, but recent recordings of a reconstructed pronunciation made by scholars.

[Hofmann]

...And I just read carefully that surangamas was asking for tones. I haven't found any information on tone reconstruction. It's really fuzzy. The tones I used in the recording were my own.

陰平: 55

陽平: 11

陰上: 35

陽上: 13

陰去: 53

陽去: 31

陰入: 55

陽入: 11

[Renacido]

陰平: 55

陽平: 11

陰上: 35

陽上: 13

陰去: 53

陽去: 31

陰入: 55

陽入: 11

I suppose that's a fair guess of their values. Curiously, I don't see much discussion regarding the tones of MC as much as the initials and finals for some reason.

[wjcd]

Youtube also has audios of reconstructed Old Chinese poems, such as

and

.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

I personally associate the entering tones with the departing tone contours, which I have interpreted as either near-mid or falling.

My reasoning was kinda old and might be refuted easily, but I did write them quite some time ago so I probably didn't have too much knowledge about tones, but nevertheless it's probably worth hearing about, I guess.

 

"- “Although rhymes in the Shijing [a collection of songs and poetry from the 10th to 7th centuries BC] usually respect these [of MC] tone categories, there are many cases of characters that are now pronounced with different tones rhyming together in the songs, mostly between the departing and entering tones.” ~ Old Chinese Phonology, Wikipedia

- The syllables ending in stops in Vietnamese have the tones that correspond to the departing tones of MC (refer to this table of MC-Viet tonal correspondences)

- The tiung gnup (中入) and yâng gnup (陽入) tones of Cantonese share the same tone contours as the departing tones of Canto

These three points suggest that the entering tone of MC should be associated with the departing tone, instead of the level tone."