Everything about Middle Chinese totally explained
Middle Chinese, 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). 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.
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. For example, in the
rime book Qieyun,
bilabial initials [ppʰ b m] characters are shown, but there were no
labiodental initials like
f and
v, which could be found in
Jiyun. This indicates that a
sound change in the pronunciation of Chinese had occurred.
Reconstruction
The reconstruction between modern linguists may vary slightly, but they're minor differences, and fairly uncontroversial, so we could say the Middle Chinese phonology is fairly well understood and accepted. (Middle) Chinese isn't written using an
alphabetic script, therefore, sounds can't be derived directly from writing. 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 (for example 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. 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). 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. 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. 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. Only fragments or incomplete copies were known until a chance discovery of a version from the Tang Dynasty in the caves of Dunhuang. Later expanded rime dictionaries such as the eleventh-century Song Dynasty Guangyun and Jiyun survive to the present day. 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 Information
Get more info on 'Middle Chinese'.
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