How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

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How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby chenyaolong on Fri Nov 14, 2014 4:54 pm

Last edited by chenyaolong on Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby Kevin_Wallbridge on Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:16 pm

Wow! I knew from study that the pronunciations had changed considerably, but I have never heard them rendered in voice. Awesome.
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby chenyaolong on Fri Nov 14, 2014 7:41 pm

When you get to middle Chinese, Song dynasty era, it sounds quite similar to Shanghai/Jiangsu dialects. In fact many Chinese poems don't rhyme well when read in Mandarin, but do when read in southern Chinese dialects.
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby kenneth fish on Fri Nov 14, 2014 10:01 pm

We do not know how ancient Latin, Greek, or Aramaic sounded - and these were languages that were written with a sounded alphabet. How can we presume to have a clue how languages like Chinese sounded in antiquity?
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby chenyaolong on Fri Nov 14, 2014 11:45 pm

The older Chinese I have no idea..... it's probably just educated guesses. Middle Chinese I think there would be some good clues - descriptions of the language by early explorers and Jesuit priests, a look at how things like Sanskrit and other foreign languages were rendered in to Chinese at that time, variations and similarities of different dialects, rhyming patterns in poetry, how Chinese characters are read in other languages such as Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Sure it's not gonna be 100%, but I still find it fascinating people trying.
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby chenyaolong on Fri Nov 14, 2014 11:48 pm

I remember reading somewhere about a Jesuit priest living in Beijing during the Ming Dynasty. He wrote down a lot of Chinese words in roman alphabet, and the words supposedly appeared almost identical to modern day Nanjing dialect.
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby kenneth fish on Sat Nov 15, 2014 11:06 am

I recall research at Taiwan National University as well as Harvard where they surmised that the language circa early Tang sounded more like Min Nan dialect. Again, as with Latin, there is no way of knowing - however the poetry and couplets had better meter and rhyme with Min Nan type pronunciation than other Southern dialects. Moreover (and this is the sort of thing that gets Mainland Chinese researcher's panties in a twist) there is good evidence for northward migration of technology and language from what is now Vietnam, where ceramic and bronze technology predated China (and some of the classic Shang designs may have borrowed from there as well)
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby yeniseri on Sat Nov 15, 2014 11:12 am

A great exercise!
We all know English language (UK version)but when we hear the Australian, US, etc through usage of words, accent, new words being formulated within that process, it is reasonable to say the same things happened with other languages vis a vis other languages within the same nation/state.
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby Bao on Sat Nov 15, 2014 1:30 pm

kenneth fish wrote:We do not know how ancient Latin, Greek, or Aramaic sounded - and these were languages that were written with a sounded alphabet. How can we presume to have a clue how languages like Chinese sounded in antiquity?


Well, we can trace different changes through different dialects and also like using other things like using different rules for writing and reciting poems. The Swedish Scholar Göran Malmqvist has traced the language through history and written quite a substantial sum on this matter. So if you are interested, you should seek his texts. He is 90 years old this year but he is still traveling around and do lectures, in Taiwan amongst other places.
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby yeniseri on Sat Nov 15, 2014 1:42 pm

I add that Latin spawned many languages, to wit, Spanish (gallego, de Galicia, Espana but sharing Portuguese similarity ;D ) Portuguese Italian, Romanian (in the middle of Slavic culture, to wit) French, Catalunya, then you have Yiddish, though sharing a Pan German influence but using Aramaic as a language modernization tool).

Then you have the Queen speaking Jamaican (creole/patois English) of which few can understand.
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby Steve James on Sat Nov 15, 2014 1:46 pm

Interesting discussion. It's true that we can trace the changes in languages. However, it is very difficult to be sure of the pronunciations. Put it this way. Do you know how I pronounce potato? It may have been written the same way for a few hundred years, but the contemporary reader is no more certain of the way an individual pronounced the word 50 or even 25 years ago. "Brooklynese" is a good example; how do you say "toilet" or "oil"? Is it "terlet" and "earl"?

The other issue is that no ancient language was written in a purely phonetic script that we know would be consistent with the one that we use now. So, it'd be possible to take reasonable guesses. And it's even possible to use those guesses to have a better idea of what, say, Middle English (Chaucer, not Shakespeare) sounded like. E.g., today, no one says "ka-nict" for "knight" or "ka-neef" for knife :) And, we wouldn't write "hwale" for whale, though that might be the way an Anglo-Saxon would have written it.

Of course, other issues, like the lack of vowels or of sounds we don't use or were used silently then. Otoh, we have a great deal of knowledge about written language --apart from articulation or pronunciation. You know, guys like Grimm, et al, who cataloged the sound shifts from Indo-European to Germanic to English, etc. So, we know that our "father" and the Latin "pater" and German "vater" have the same roots. Buuut, how do you pronounce "pater"? :)
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby yeniseri on Sat Nov 15, 2014 8:29 pm

I might have mentioned this before but a group of friends from Canada were doing a cultural performance of Kathak dance at a community college in Illinois. They drove until they got to the border (IL/IN) and when they began asking how far the town was they needed to be at, nobody seemed to know so they called another friend who we all know. My friend asked them what is the name of the town and they responded 'Day Plain', which did not sound like a place we all knew so they asked the friend to spell the name of the town and they said "Des Plaines" as in dez plaines which was the location of Oakton Community College. But when mentioning Iowa as in Des Moines, it is pronounced the proper way but Illinoise uses the anglo pronumciation of dez plaines and it is judged as correct.
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby chenyaolong on Sat Nov 15, 2014 8:49 pm

I would imagine that from comparing how different Romance languages pronounce words, we can get a fairly good idea of how Latin sounded.

Something I found interesting was how Vedic chanting is transmitted and how they ensure the pronounciation remains unchanged.

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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby Steve James on Sat Nov 15, 2014 9:16 pm

I would imagine that from comparing how different Romance languages pronounce words, we can get a fairly good idea of how Latin sounded.


Probably not. There is an official version of Latin still spoken in the Vatican. However, Latin is named after a group of people, the Latini; and it was simply their particular dialect of the people who lived around Rome. People in Sicily who eventually spoke Latin had just as much a difference in accent as Sicilians have from Romans or Milanese who speak Italian now. That's one way we can "know" that we can't know how Roman Latin was pronounced.

The fact that we are brought up in literate societies often makes us assume that standardization was a rule. In fact, literature and written language were and are often the only ways that people --who speak the same language-- can understand each other. There are plenty of places in London, Birmingham, Dublin, Glasgow or Kingston where everyone "speaks" English; but an American or Canadian wouldn't be able to understand a thing that was said. The point being that they are all English speakers, but all sound very different. Needless to say, many people can't understand Shakespeare --though it's generally accepted that the RC pronunciation of Olivier (great actor) and company is definitely not the way Shakespearean actors spoke. But, here's the way people who linguistic studies for Shakespeare's English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
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Re: How Chinese sounded through different Dynastys

Postby kenneth fish on Sat Nov 15, 2014 9:55 pm

Great example Steve.

I recall that when I returned to America in after living in Taiwan I encountered the Boston accent for the first time. It was a cold Saturday night, and my friends and I were bored stiff. We decided to pile into my friends VW Beetle and drive to Boston from NYC. .. we got there in the wee hours of the morning, hungry and road weary. We pulled into a gas station and asked the attendant where we could get something to eat at that hour - he gave us directions, telling us to head straight on the road we were on and then turn left at "the pahk". We had no idea what he was saying, and my friend asked if there was a park or some other landmark....the attendant looked offended and said "ah you making fun ah me?"......at that point we realized he'd been saying "park"......
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