Ancient Hanyu sounded more like Canto than Mando?

[Amdir_Flassion]

I read from a book on Chinese linguistics that the dialect spoken by the Han peoples in the past sounded more like southern dialects than modern Mandarin e.g. the clipped constants and more tones

Is this true? I'm sick of the attitude of some northern mainland Chinese telling me and my kind that we southerners aren't really Han Chinese at all because they believe Mandarin has always been the dialect of the 'real' Han.

And besides, how did Mandarin originate? I get the impression from a few of my Mandarin teachers that Mandarin is the 'mother' dialect and that others such as Cantonese and Minnanyu are just 'deformed' descendants of Mandarin.

But I'm more inclined to believe that the majority of Chinese dialects including Mandarin and Cantonese descended from some common form of Hanyu that is not spoken today anymore in its purest form.

[Guest Arsenii]

Cantonese is older than mandarin, and it preserved a lot of ancient sounds:

我 is read wo, but 饿 is read e, while in cantonese these two hanzi are read ngo. They have the same part: 我, so, originaly their reading was the same.

[Guest greenpine]

canton dialect is one of the many southern dialects that keep alot of the ancient sounds, all dialects are older than mandarin, the previous 我 and 餓 example given, in cantonian, if i am correct, they are pronounced "ngo" similar to that of shanghaian which is pronounced "ngu", the sound of "ng" does not exist in mandarin but were used widely in ancient 漢語.

[Quest]

Dialects most likely existed in ancient China as well. Ancient poets wrote in their own dialects. Different emperors spoke different dialects. What is ancient Hanyu?

[Guest greenpine]

dialects did exist most likely, but although they were different, the fundamental rules stayed pretty much the same, which means that a poem written in 1 dialect can be read in another, although sounds different, but it still rhyme in their own dialects.

Tang published official vowel | 韻 specification, thus, most if not all poems written then conformed to that specification.

it was after the Song that hanyu started to change alot due to constant invasion from the northern tribes and ultimately 2 foreign tribes seized power and had decisive influence on the language.

Manchu dynasty had the biggest influence, it is evident from 康熙字典, 康熙字典still maintained a considerable amount of the authentic sounds, due to that it was just after the native Ming dynasty.

in authentic hanyu, there is no 兒化音 such as 開門兒,什麼事兒 like in much of the modern northern dialects, this came from nomads because on the big grassland, 兒 helps out to make the sound louder.

[Guest Arsenii]

Look 高本汉's dictionary. Kalgren (i don't remember for sure) is his real name. he gives there the old and middle reading of hanzi.

[ala]

>>Is this true? I'm sick of the attitude of some northern mainland Chinese telling me and my kind that we southerners aren't really Han Chinese at all because they believe Mandarin has always been the dialect of the 'real' Han. And besides, how did Mandarin originate? I get the impression from a few of my Mandarin teachers that Mandarin is the 'mother' dialect and that others such as Cantonese and Minnanyu are just 'deformed' descendants of Mandarin. <<

Ha. No Mandarin is not the mother dialect. Mandarin has lost rusheng (short vowel) distinction (which in Cantonese are -k/-p/-t finals). Looking at modern Japanese, you notice that even Japanese has some derivative of rusheng (-ku/-tsu/-chi/-u endings as well as double consonants). Shanghainese has rusheng as well, although it no longer differentiates -k/-p/-t endings (it's instead just one silent glottal stop).

In terms of consonant initials, Cantonese is not as faithful as some other Chinese dialects, although still more faithful than Mandarin. Notably, Wu Chinese (to which Shanghainese belongs to) and Min are more faithful on that matter. Shanghainese still to this day have voiced consonants (where your vocal cords vibrate as you pronounce the intial), d,b,g,z,n,m, y.., whereas both Cantonese and Mandarin have voiceless consonants. That's also why the old Wade-Giles system spells Taibei as T'aipei and dianying as tienying; because the Mandarin b-,g-,d- (as written in pinyin) is NOT voiced like it is in English, French, and Japanese. Spoken Shanghainese vowels and tones however have degenerated to a very sad state, making Shanghainese phonetics approaching Japanese. Even then, there are cases where the vowels are more faithful than both Mandarin and Cantonese. For example, in Shanghainese, "to thank" (sja), "to write" (sha), "crab" (ha) end with -ia for the first two, and -a for "crab."

[bathrobe]

Of course Mandarin is not the mother dialect. Still, it has been adopted as the standard dialect, which leads many people to believe that anything else is, by definition, non-standard, but that is a particularly unsophisticated view of language. English speakers have similar prejudices about English and its dialects. (Haven't you heard the saying, 'A language is a dialect with an army and a navy'? Something the same goes for Mandarin and Cantonese -- Mandarin a standard language due to the political power of the north, Cantonese a mere dialect).

Historically, in many ways Mandarin has changed from ancient Chinese more than the southern dialects, which are more conservative.

But on the other hand, speaking a conservative dialect doesn't mean anything. In fact, I've been told dialects near the centre of things tend to change a lot more. It's only the dialects way out on the periphery that don't get all the sound changes, or get them later than everyone else. (This is based on the concept that there is a centre of influence, from which changes spread outward. The ones most isolated from the centre are more conservative because they are the last to be affected by the changes).

By way of consolation, I would add that in the modern era, Cantonese has become a centre of influence in its own right due to the economic progress of the south and the influence of Hongkong. There has been quite a bit of Cantonese influence on Mandarin in recent years.

[ala]

But on the other hand' date=' speaking a conservative dialect doesn't mean anything. In fact, I've been told dialects near the centre of things tend to change a lot more. It's only the dialects way out on the periphery that don't get all the sound changes, or get them later than everyone else. (This is based on the concept that there is a centre of influence, from which changes spread outward. The ones most isolated from the centre are more conservative because they are the last to be affected by the changes).[/quote']

True for the most part. Except that the most signficant reason why Mandarin is so different from the other Chinese dialects in evolution was that Northern China was repeatedly conquered by northern tribes; not that it was "the Center." Northern tribes had difficulties learning some of the peculiarities in Chinese at the time, and vastly simplified the phonetics. Much like the degeneration of Chinese pronounciation we see in Sino-Japanese. In Mandarin's case, as I said earlier, Chinese's characteristic rusheng 入声 (something even Korean and Japanese to some extent have kept) is completely thrown away in Mandarin. Every other Chinese dialect outside of Mandarin 官话 has kept some form of rusheng. This cannot be just an issue of periphery being more conservative. Also the lower Yangtze region of China was the cultural center of China at least since the Southern Song Dynasty, not northern China. Politics instead is the key. And Cantonese's influence and reach is more because of Hong Kong (as separate political entity) than economic prosperity.