[fcharton]

USC, on Sep 15 2005, 07:04 PM, said:

I was quite surprised that ancient spoken Chinese need to re-create or reconstruct by a foreign linguist.
I'm pretty sure they're mainland Chinese linguist expert, cud you quote some scholar of their work??

It is not that surprising, in fact.

First, the study of evolution of languages was a very hot research topic in Europe from the 19th century onwards. As many different languages were available, which could be trace to a common origins, lots of methodological efforts were put in understanding how pronounciations evolved in indoeuropean languages, and all these results were naturally put to use on chinese language.

Second, I personally believe one pays more attention to pronounciation details in a foreign language (which one had to learn the hard way) than in his own (which you speak without thinking of...). Your observation is not specific to the chinese language, as far as I know, some of the best specialist of medieval french are not french...

Finally, I believe there was a specific problem with the chinese language : the absence of an alphabet, and an unified writing system. Suppose you want to communicate with someone on the pronounciation of a word : at some point you have to write that "character X is pronounced as character Y" (or a more complex variation on this theme), which becomes a problem when the sounds do not exist anymore, or when different persons pronouce the same character in different ways.

This said, the studies on the pronounciation of ancient chinese have catched up in China since Karlgren's time, and there are experts in China.

Francois

[urofpersia]

USC, on Sep 16 2005, 01:04 AM, said:

Yun,
I was quite surprised that ancient spoken Chinese need to re-create or reconstruct by a foreign linguist.
I'm pretty sure they're mainland Chinese linguist expert, cud you quote some scholar of their work??
For sure, nobody knows the ancient spoken Chinese are of Hokkien or Hakka tones like. i think it
wud be funny.

Actually, it is not uncommon for Chinese scholars (not necessarily linguists at all) to remark on the fact that Tang Dynasty poems rhymes better in Southern Chinese dialects like Min or Hakka for some time now. In fact some people have been using this as 'evidence' that the Southern Chinese languages are closer to the chinese as spoken in earlier times.

But the thing to bear in mind is that whether Min, Hakka or Cantonese those are *not* the language as spoken during the Tang. Mandarin and Wu are all legitimate descendants of Ancient Chinese and any objective attempts at recontructing Ancient Chinese must take all current languages into account.

To be frank, if the stations were to use Min, Hakka for period dramas, I wouldnt find it funny, but I might have issues with understanding it. Hokkien or Hakka, like any language properly spoken with the right accent sounds dignified and cultured.

[nishishei]

Karlgren based most his of research on the rhyme and fanqie tables compiled during the Tang, Song, Ming dynasties. Most of the organizational and compilation work was already done long before he came; all he did was to generate a phonology from that. The Chinese were well aware of the concepts of an initial, a medial, a rhyme and a tone for a long long time. A full phonology of ancient Middle Chinese was never compiled until Karlgren's time because the Chinese had no alphabet.

[phoenix_bladen]

urofpersia, on Sep 15 2005, 12:37 PM, said:

But the thing to bear in mind is that whether Min, Hakka or Cantonese those are *not* the language as spoken during the Tang. Mandarin and Wu are all legitimate descendants of Ancient Chinese and any objective attempts at recontructing Ancient Chinese must take all current languages into account.

To be frank, if the stations were to use Min, Hakka for period dramas, I wouldnt find it funny, but I might have issues with understanding it. Hokkien or Hakka, like any language properly spoken with the right accent sounds dignified and cultured.

althought it could be complicated i understand completely what you are saying .......

they're all dervied from 1 ancient language but some of them changed more and some of them changed less......

and from my understanding of reading your post you are trying to tell us that min, hakka, and cantonese did not change as much as mandarin or wu and hence that is why they rhym better......

in fact all the movies i've watched base on dynastic films are authentic cantonese voices cause they're produced in HK heheheh hub of cantonese pop culture and drama .....so yea i guess i know how it's like for olden style to speak cantonese and not mandarin .......!

[Too hi Fat]

I have always been told that the original language spoken by QinShiHuangDi and the Xia (I think this is right one) dynasty before him was Hakka and that it was standardised over the empire. Then the Han took it up ... then Tang then Song. Before the Mongols took it over.
(This might be a Hakka people bias)

This MAY explains why Hakka has "amalgamated" so many different languages to form so many dialets.

[xng]

Too hi Fat, on Sep 18 2005, 05:43 AM, said:

I have always been told that the original language spoken by QinShiHuangDi and the Xia (I think this is right one) dynasty before him was Hakka and that it was standardised over the empire. Then the Han took it up ... then Tang then Song. Before the Mongols took it over.
(This might be a Hakka people bias)

This MAY explains why Hakka has "amalgamated" so many different languages to form so many dialets.

Qinshihuang did NOT standardize spoken languages, only the written languages.

Even before the qin dynasty - chou dynasty, there were already 3 main chinese languages.

http://www.chinahist...?showtopic=6974

Hakka are relatively newcomers to the south, only towards the end of song dynasty due to the invasion from the mongols.

Whereas, the cantonese and min migrated south during the late tang dynasty. Is that why they call themselves "tong yan" or "tang people" ?

The Wu colonised the part of shanghai during the early tang dynasty. That is what I read from history books, can anybody confirm ?

Giving the theory that any "North" languages are easily influenced by mandarin , I would say both min and cantonese have features which are closer to the olden languages since they are the furthest geographically from mandarin.

(min due to the retaining of true "b" as in "boy", "g" as in "girl")

(cantonese due to retaining of most of the original 8 tones)

This post has been edited by xng: 18 September 2005 - 07:33 AM

[qrasy]

xng, on Sep 18 2005, 08:11 PM, said:

The Wu colonised the part of shanghai during the early tang dynasty. That is what I read from history books, can anybody confirm ?

What book? What do you mean by "the Wu" who colonised area of Shanghai?

Quote

Giving the theory that any "North" languages are easily influenced by mandarin , I would say both min and cantonese have features which are closer to the olden languages since they are the furthest geographically from mandarin.

?You want to say Mandarin is not North language? Or Hakka is a North language? Hakka itself still retains -p,-t, -k. Also not affected by heavy palatalization like Mandarin's effect on Wu.

Quote

(min due to the retaining of true "b" as in "boy", "g" as in "girl")

(cantonese due to retaining of most of the original 8 tones)

Min did not retain b and g of it's from nasal e.g. 母 and 疑. Min only have 'm' and 'ng' in nasalised ~ (nasalization like French). Now I think it's dropped in some places so you may not observe the feature I mean. But you clearly observe loss of nasal endings of some of -ng, -n, -m, which was dropped and giving rise to this effect.
"Old" b and g become p and h/zero in Hokkien.
Wu are the true retainer of voiced consonants. Some of Wu retain 7-8 tones, while others may be 2.
Cantonese retain all of 8 tones, only splitting Yin Ru into 2 (giving rise to 9 tones). (some also Yin Ping into 2).

This post has been edited by qrasy: 18 September 2005 - 10:01 AM

[xng]

Quote

Cantonese retain all of 8 tones, only splitting Yin Ru into 2 (giving rise to 9 tones). (some also Yin Ping into 2).

Grasy, I think this discussion should be discussed in the "evolution of chinese languages" thread as it has nothing to do with whether "qin shi huang spoke mandarin". Please see my answer there.

http://www.chinahist...?showtopic=6974

This post has been edited by xng: 19 September 2005 - 02:12 AM