I realized that it is possible that mandarin has evolved greatly from Middle Chinese, ever since the Yuan Dynasty(ethnic Mongols) came to power. Middle Chinese is the Chinese spoken during Tang, Sui and Song dynasty where both Cantonese dialects and Hakka still preserve many features of Middle Chinese. As the Mongols speak a altaic language and probably Chinese was hard for them to pronounce[ the initial consonant (Ng-), some vowels, Final consonants (-t,-m,-k,-p)], the new foreign rulers of the Middle Kingdom probably changed Middle Chinese to what we know as Mandarin, inorder for the rulers and other Mongols to be able to learn & speak Chinese easily.

Example of Initial consonants:
Me; Ngo -> Wo [the initial consonant Ng- was probably hard to pronounce, so they changed it to a "W"]
Person; Nyin or Ngin -> Ren [the evolution was probably from Nyin -> Yin -> Yen -> Ren]

Example of Vowels:
I guess some of words that contained the "i" vowel were hard to pronounce so they changed some of the words to "ei", since in Mandarin they sometimes use "i" or "ei" in their words; where as in Middle Chinese the "i" vowel was probably only used.
United States; Mi Guok -> Mei Guo [Mi was probably hard for them to pronounce, so they changed it to Mei]

Example of Final Consonants:
Yit -> Yi [the final consonant -t was probably removed because it was not easy to pronounce]
Sam -> San [ditto with -m]
Liuk -> Liu [ditto with -k]
Ship -> Shi [ditto with -p]

Dude. Where, if any, are your linguistic sources? It's not wrong to theorise or postulate, but you'd need some sources to back your realisation up.

Another example is that in South-Western Mandarin they preserve more of Middle Chinese than the other types of Mandarin spoken in Northern China [Standard Mandarin - based on the Beijing variant]. South-Western Mandarin includes the provinces of Sichuan, Hubei, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan. Example, South-Western Mandarin says Ngo instead of Wo.

Other examples:

English; SW Mandarin vs Beijing Mandarin
Me; Ngo vs Wo
Shoes; Hai vs Xie
Street; Gai vs Jie
Water; Sui vs Shui


To answer Mok:
There is no need for sources mok, this is basic linguistic stuff. Most CHF members who are active in the language section know that the initial consonants used in middle chinese were Ng-, vowels used were "i" instead of "ei" and the final consonants are -t,-m,-k,-p. In addition, it is known also that Hakka and Cantonese dialects preserve most of Middle Chinese compared to other Modern Chinese languages.

Rather than say "change", it's more of an language evolution process. The Mongols spoke Mandarin with a Mongol-influenced pronunciation. There were also Khitan and Jurchen influence in northern China.

but the thing is between Song and Ming, the dynasty in between was Yuan and the time difference is small, therefore there must have been a policy or law made by the Yuan Dynasty that must have dramatically change Middle Chinese to what we now know as Modern Mandarin, which was started to be spoken during Ming. So i would stick with the word "change" instead of "evolution". What are your opinions?

Also i heard that in the Northern Chinese province of Shanxi, the people there say Hai instead of Xie for Shoes too. So Hai must have been the original pronounciation for the word Shoes.

I can't believe I'm reading this. No need for sources? Then we may as well not have founded CHF. "Basic linguistic stuff" does not negate a need for sources.

Even if both you and I can tell the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese based on "basic linguistic stuff", we still need sources to back up our claims or our claims are not even worth the time it took to type them out.



Be that as it may, even common knowledge needs some grounds. Where are yours? Right now what you've posted sounds like a bunch of folksonomy and amateur linguistics.

And that, sir, is the basis for your conclusion? The similar pronunciation? Where are your linguistic or scholarly sources?

You sound like a nationalistic Cantonese fanboy to me, and while I have a great deal of Cantonese pride, I would never let that overcome my good sense and belief in scholarly research. Your agenda is one of championing the south vs. the north. What good is there in it? A Cantonese empire? Believe me, while I love my culture and language, I think the only thing worth preserving for posterity is our food.

yes of course sources are essential, I 101% agree on that and i always post my sources with links to articles when necessary. But most likely the ones who will be interested in reading about this subject are those who are into Chinese linguistics and they know the basics.

The person who has knowledge on Chinese linguistics, will probably be the one telling me that i am wrong + with back up sources. But i doubt so because this is basic Middle Chinese that i am displaying >.<

You can observe the initial and final consonants of Middle Chinese[Tang Dynasty Chinese] that is not found in Mandarin, but instead in Cantonese and Hakka dialects -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-clOl8y2qNo

Agreeing about sources doesn't seem to make you post them on here. I find that contradicting. It doesn't matter whether it concerns basic linguistic knowledge or not. All knowledge must be substantiated.

Sources aside, you haven't answered me about your very apparent agenda.

I just gave a source above >.<

To answer your post about Cantonese nationalism: i am proud to be Cantonese as well, but Nationalism and Common sense can be seperated if you're [not reffering to you, but anybody in general] are strong enough - which i am. I am using knowlege not Cantonese nationalism ><

South-Western Mandarin:
Sichuan dialect -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3SL_FVOSYQ
[You can notice that "Me" is pronounced as Ngo instead of Wo]

Andy, I think it might just be better to show the sources. Even more so because I don't even think that you could claim to be a master. Why not just show the sources here too and provide your assertions with a bit more weight?

I also find the original post rather speculative as to the degree of change or the difficulty that would have faced the Mongols. I mean, how do you know that they would significantly change it? History does seem to give the impression that Chinese was something that people bent to in order to learn; it did not seem to bend for people to speak it more easily. Case in point being how the Khitans were bilingual (thus probably making less incentive for any real big crossover or changes to the language), and how the Jurchens readily picked it up and began to forget or stop using their own language. By this observation, it does not seem as if it was exceedingly difficult for those steppe people to pick up the language. It doesn't seem to be a sufficient reason for suggesting that the Altaic speaking Khitans, Jurchens, or Mongols had a gigantic impact on the Chinese spoken in the north.

And the observation on shoes should probably be just a suggestion for a sound; we're too far away to decisively know what it was. For all we know, the Minnan eiya (which seems to be of the same root) might be closer. It all suggests that Xie is a fairly recent term/pronunciation, but we can't be certain that Hai was how they said it.

Evolution is more appropriate word instead of 'complete' change, as the 'change took place over a long period of time.

Ming dynasty spoke Nanjing Mandarin (instead of Beijing Mandarin), which in term originated from Middle Chinese or Central Plain Mandarin (known as "Ya Yan 雅言"), which was spoken during Southern Song period.

During Southern Song period, as a result of moving of capital from the northern city of Kaifeng to southern city of Hangzhou, there was a large migration of han-chinese from north and central plain of China to Hangzhou (in Zhejiang province). They brought the central plain tones and pronunciation to Hangzhou, intermingled with the Wu dialect. This combination allowed the "modern Mandarin" to slowly evolve and by Ming dynasty period had become what's known as "Nanjing Mandarin".

In northern parts of China (predominantly in Jin-occupied territory or Western Xia territory), the dialects there (which is not necessarily equal to Beijing Mandarin) was subjected to influence from languages such as Khitan, Tanguts, Jurchen and later Mongols.




The official court language of Yuan dynasty was Mongol and not Mandarin chinese. That's why there were communication problems between northern and southern China. (see http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/46416493.html?fr=qrl)

There were many reasons why Mongol language were used:

1. Chinese is only one of the languages within the Mongol Empire. They used the language of the ruling class.

2. Mongol language was used to prevent Mongol ruling class from being completely sinicized

That means to say, Mongol was widely spoken in Northern China during Yuan dynasty. Those who spoke the Ya Yan 雅言 (middle chinese-evolved Mandarin) were from the former Southern Song dynasty (predominantly in the South). During Yuan dynasty, language was in a mixed state and there were many languages spoken in China at that time.

After Ming dynasty, the northern region gradually returned back to speaking Mandarin chinese (following Nanjing Mandarin), allowing Mandarin to be widespread in Northern China.

I did.. look at the above posts "

To answer Yang: Well mandarin isn't that much different from other Middle Chinese descendants like Cantonese and Hakka. Both Mandarin & Cantonese OR Hakka are very similar, except that mandarin just lost the initial consonant Ng- and the final consonants, and that's it! I didn't say that they dramatically changed Middle Chinese to something totally different >.<

Where? What?



Wow, if common sense is all that's required, we could all be scholars. Well, some of us anyway.

I'm not going to argue with you...

Here are the links again (plus some additional ones):
1) You can observe the initial and final consonants of Middle Chinese[Tang Dynasty Chinese] that is not found in Mandarin, but instead in Cantonese and Hakka dialects -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-clOl8y2qNo
2) Sichuan dialect [you can hear Ngo = Me] -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3SL_FVOSYQ
3) Sichuan dialect [you can hear Sui not Shui = Water & Gai = Street] -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfc60vzrmlE]
4) Final consonants in Middle Chinese [look at (27)] -> http://books.google.ca/books?id=lUIj3ONg_M...esult#PPA224,M1 Here you can see how Modern Mandarin lost many of the final consonants from Middle Chinese to Old Mandarin to Modern Mandarin. It seems Old Mandarin preserved the -m [example: "South" in Old Mandarin would have stayed as "Nam" from Middle Chinese, but then in Modern Mandarin it evolved to "Nan"].
5) Sichuan dialect [you can hear Sui, Ngo, so on] -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUWsg1jbiFY

Andy ...

Some prominent Chinese dialects have variables.

And what do these links prove? That the Mongols couldn't pronounce Middle Chinese properly? That they infused Altaic pronunciations into Middle Chinese? That Middle Chinese changed and not evolved?

The thing about linguistics, my man, is that it evolves, not changes. A language can no more change its roots than a leopard its spots. However, both language and leopard can evolve. I really think you are barking up the wrong tree where this whole north vs. south linguistics is concerned. You ask any linguistics expert and see if they tell you any differently.

Take Spanish, for example. I can pretty much follow a Madrid accent, but those Seville accents are killer. And yes, each accent belongs to a particular dialect of Spanish. So does Mexican-Spanish. They all evolved from a common root, not changed. If they changed, they may as well be French or Italian.

The same way Yue, Minnan, Wu, etc. all evolved from a common root. Just because a dialect is closer to Middle Chinese does not make it any more or less superior. And that is your whole agenda, is it not?

i never said that evolution of mandarin never happened. It did evolved, but i am just saying that probably during the Yuan dynasty rule there were some slight changes. Mongol was the official language used during Yuan rule - as GZ stated before - but of course Chinese must have been used as well, inorder for both the authorities and the population to be able to communicate with each other, so they must have had some kind of policy that enforced a slight change [i am not saying this is what happened, but i am saying it's a possibility]. But because Middle Chinese was hard to pronounce for the Mongols[as Modern Southern Chinese language are hard for Northern Chinese speakers] with all those initial and final consonants, they probably had done some minor changes. Btw, those sources are useful for what i just explained.

There is a saying by Northern Chinese speakers, "as you go more south, the language gets more difficult to pronounce". Which is why, the Mongols had problems speaking Middle Chinese, so they must have slightly modified it so Chinese could be more easier for them to learn & speak. Example: instead of saying Ngo -> Wo.

Min, Yue, Wu, Mandarin, Gan, Hakka, Xiang are all Chinese dialects, but among them Yue, Gan, Hakka and Mandarin are descendants of Middle Chinese. As you can see from this Chinese language tree -> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ch..._tree_plain.png
No why would these other Chinese dialects be inferior? All Chinese languages are unique, beauitful and have history.

You keep saying "must have", then turn around and say "possibility" and "might". Which is which?

And I don't think your theory about the Mongols and their supposed speech impediment holds much water. I am not French or Spanish but with a lot of practice, I daresay my pronunciation is pretty much standard. I didn't drop any endings or stop the rolls of my tongue just because I might have found them difficult. Similarly, what proof is there that the Mongols couldn't pronounce Middle Chinese properly? The Jurchens and Khitans did, did they not?

A random question,how do we validate those sampled individuals speak ' standard ' form of the particular dialect and have accurate pronunciation ?

As far as I know,most Chinese ( regardless of geographic locations ) speak ' imperfect ' Mandarin.

It's a misconception that the whole of northern China speaks the 'same standard Mandarin language'.
There were various 'sub-dialects' of Mandarin classified under the "Mandarin family".

Promotion of standard Mandarin language only began during the 20th century, but in actual fact, different regions of Northern China speak different sub-dialects of Mandarin. For instance, if you travel to Shaan'xi province, they also speak their own local sub-dialects of Mandarin, which is different and unintelligible from standard Mandarin.

Sichuan dialect is considered to be a "Mandarin dialect", classified under "Mandarin family". In fact, pronounciation is about the same, but the tones are totally different. I think, they were generally influenced by the ancient native language of Bashu tribes 巴蜀.

The reasons for the evolution of these sub-dialects were due to geographical barrier, countless of war and migration, invasion by various northern tribes and presence of various other ethnicities etc.

no kidding ZY about the Sichuan Mandarin. the tones were totally different than what I was used to hearing. I remember watching an interview with the earthquake survivor Lin Hao( the one in the Olympic opening ceremony) and I couldnt understand much of his Sichuan accented Mandarin. Then he spoke in standard Mandarin and I could understand all of it. If you want to hear it, heres the link. The first part of the interview is in Sichuan dialect then the second half is in standard Mandarin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmYAl-YFiXM...feature=related

China always had dialects, and differences in spoken chinese were probably bigger in the past, when people travelled less and mainstream media didn't exist.

Modern mandarin seem to be (a big claim which still is very debatable, since we know almost nothing about the ancient pronounciation of dialects) more influenced by northern dialects than middle chinese because the capital of China from the Yuan onwards moved north to Beijing, and the official tongue of a country is always influenced by the local dialect of the capital. This made Mandarin more "northern" than the previous varieties of "putonghua".

The influence of altaic pronounciation on some evolution which would have taken place in the (very shortlived) Yuan dynasty, and propagated to all China, and would have been kept in the Ming restoration, seems like a very big claim to me. Northern accents probably existed since old times.

Francois

I think that Andy has made some very interesting suppositions, which sound plausible enough to me.

I also accept Mok's point that his arguments are not supported by academic sources. The Youtube clips are interesting pieces of video, but merely demonstrate differences between Mandarin and Cantonese, not the reasons for the differences, and that is Mok's concern with Andy's argument. There must surely be some linguistic studies that have been done, and which Andy might be able to reference to support his arguments.

Reading Francois's post, an interesting thought occurred to me. Since Chinese uses pictograms (which have remained fairly standard since the Qin) we have no direct written evidence of pronunciation. In languages that use alphabets, it is possible to see the change in the pronunciation of a word, where the language has been written phonetically. Consider these lines of Chaucer's The Knight's Tale in Middle English:

We han ben waitynge al this fourtenyght.
Now help us, lord, sith it is in thy myght.
I, wrecche, which that wepe and wayle thus,
Was whilom wyf to kyng cappaneus

And the corresponding lines (with some licence) in modern English:

We have been waiting through a long fortnight;
Now help us, lord, since it is in your might.
"I, wretched woman, who am weeping thus,
Was once the wife of King Capaneus

I have highlighted a number of words whose pronunciation has changed in the intervening time.

We can do the same with an Old English word like "hnaef" and its modern equivalent, "raven".

This enables scholars to see the etymology of words and patterns of mutation.

I suspect that in languages like Chinese this might be more difficult, as there is no phonetic guide to the way words evolved over time. We just see the differences now and have to postulate backwards. Of course there may be indirect evidence, such as poems which are arranged in rhyming couplets and such, which might give clues to the way words were pronounced at a given point in time.

Not all arguments can be supported by academic sources unless somebody has already researched into it. Eg. During Einstein's time, there were no academic sources for the theory of relativity and he had to write papers on it ie. he was the first.

I have read many articles on the internet regarding the differences between mandarin and other chinese dialects.

It is common knowledge that mandarin has lost the final consonants m,t,p,k present in southern chinese languages such as minnan, cantonese, hakka. And also mandarin don't have the 'ng' initial consonant which are present in the abovementioned chinese languages.

It is highly probably that this is due to influences from the altaic languages such as mongol, manchurian during their rule.

The average modern northern chinese (not linguists or academics) have trouble pronouncing the final consonants if you ask anybody from hong kong, what more can be said for those altaic languages speakers a few hundred years ago ?

I don't doubt any of that, and, as I said, I find his suppositions quite plausible.

I just don't think that Andy is the first person to have looked into this, and if he is, then he needs to do a swag more work to prove his arguments.

I say good luck to Andy, and I hope he can do more work to make the case better.

I think most of the academic sources would be written in Chinese rather than English.

However, I found another discussion in this link

http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=92290

But the family of dialects known as Jinyu (spoken in Shanxi mostly), do retain the glottal stop (-k final), entering tone, and changes in tone depending on grammatical function of the words, which are thought (by some at least) to be characteristic of ancient chinese... Given their geographical location, they should be some of the most altaic-influenced dialects, no?

Francois

with the above links, i proved that the initial and final consonants were used in Middle Chinese, and that South-western Mandarin retains some vocabulary from Middle Chinese like the word Ngo [Me] instead of Wo, for example. The only thing i could not prove was that there was a change in Middle Chinese during the Yuan Dynasty period that made it lose it's initial and final consonants, but that is because i was not trying to prove it, but rather just saying it is a possibility & wanted other people's opinion. I did not say, that "it [a Yuan gov't policy to slightly change Middle Chinese] exactly happened", rather it "could have" happen since we don't have a time machine to bring us back to that period.

But it is for sure that from looking at Tang poetry vs Ming poetry, we can tell there was a change [rhyme well or not in Mandarin vs Canto OR Hakka] in between that must have occured during the Yuan Dynasty.

All i know is that Shanxi province is geographically isolated by mountains on it's borders with neighbouring provinces and Inner-Mongolia. So Shanxi must have been able to retain more of ancient chinese compared to it's neighbours to the north, east and west.

Nobody says Chinese dialects are inferior to Mandarin! Inferior to what?? haha maybe that inferior complex exist mosltly in the imagination of overseas (Chinese) non-speakers of Mandarin chinese. Different pronunciation of same words so some pronunciation is superior to others? non-sense. If you are in China today, and hear the different dialects/local dialects spoken all over north and south of China, there is really no sense of inferiorirty in those speakers at all. Yes the north has all kinds of local dialects (even thu classified as Mandarin) that are so difficult to decipher as those from the south. It's more like you are special procnouncing the word your special way, taken into account that everybody s/b speaking/understanding Mandarin too. And this is what majority of Chinese Mandarin speakers think, they do not really feel southern dialects are inferior, they feel that the dialects are special.
BTW, your argument on the northern people cannot pronounce the correct Chinese is weak. After that many generations, the offspring of those ancient nomads should speak real Chinese with no accent! Proof, listen to those ABC, or CBC, in 1-2 gen. in America, they or their offsprings all speak English with no accent at all!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooo

A leopard can so lose its spots. Genetic mutation is the answer to all questions in life.


How did people know what people in Tang talk like? Or for that matter, how do people know what people talk like prior to the age where voices could be recorded?

That's my main gripe about this theory. It assumes too much what Middle Chinese sounded like; but it is almost impossible to figure that out without a recording. All we have are relics that we can speculate with; no more.

And again, I still find that the idea that Mongols would have had extreme difficulty speaking Chinese and that they would have to change Chinese a bit to speak it a bit absurd. Again, the Khitan and Jurchen examples come into play. I find it a little odd to assert that the Mongols would have had exceptional difficulty if the Khitans regularly adopted it as a second language, and if the Jurchens took it up wholesale. The use of Mongol as Yuan's official language doesn't count for all that much on the difficulty factor--it could just be as much about imposing dominance (which I personally find more likely), and is not necessarily a testament to the difficulty for them to learn Chinese.

The thread title is quite mis-leading.maybe we need to re-word it.

This language stuff is pretty interesting

From previous posts i have read on the CHF language section, Middle Chinese was developed based on using Tang Poetry, Chinese influenced languages such as Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese and comparing these two components to Modern Chinese dialects. According to what i have read, Cantonese and Hakka dialects seem to be closer, while Mandarin was highly in contact with normad tribes from the North of the Yellow River. So could this been the reason why Mandarin evolved further away from Middle Chinese after the collapse of the Song ?

If that were so, I would love for nationalists and supremacists to be mutated.



Precisely. How can we know, unless someone travelled back in time?



Good point.