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Late Middle Chinese |
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Middle Chinese, formerly known as Ancient Chinese, is the historical Chinese dialect recorded in the Qieyun, a rime dictionary
first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The fanqie method used to indicate pronunciation
in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The 12th-century Yunjing and
other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticated and convenient analysis of the Qieyun phonology. The rime tables attest
to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of the Qieyun. Linguists sometimes
refer to the system of the Qieyun as Early Middle Chinese and the variant revealed by the rime tables as Late Middle Chinese.
The dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual sounds. The Swedish linguist
Bernard Karlgren believed that the dictionaries recorded a speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties,
and produced a reconstruction of its sounds. However, based on the more recently recovered preface of the Qieyun, most scholars
now believe that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Southern
and Northern Dynasties period. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of the preceding
system of Old Chinese phonology (1st millennium BC). The Middle Chinese system is often used as a framework for the study
and description of various modern varieties of Chinese. Branches of the Chinese family such as Mandarin Chinese (including
Standard Chinese, based on the speech of Beijing), Yue Chinese and Wu Chinese can be largely treated as divergent developments
from the Qieyun system. The study of Middle Chinese also provides for a better understanding and analysis of Classical Chinese
poetry, such as the study of Tang poetry. |
Names (more)[en] Chinese, Late Middle[fr] Chinois médiéval [sh] Srednji kineski jezik [it] Medio cinese [ja] 中古音 [ms] Bahasa Cina Pertengahan [no] Middelalderkinesisk [pl] Język średniochiński [ru] Среднекитайский язык [sr] Средњи кинески језик [sv] Medeltidskinesiska [zh] 中古汉语 |
Language type : Ancient
Technical notes
This page is providing structured data for the language Late Middle Chinese. |
ISO 639 CodesISO 639-3 : ltcLinked Data URIshttp://lexvo.org/id/iso639-3/ltchttp://dbpedia.org/resource/ISO_639:ltc More URIs at sameas.org SourcesAuthority documentation for ISO 639 identifier: ltcFreebase ISO 639-3 : ltc GeoNames.org Country Information Publications Office of the European Union Metadata Registry : Countries and Languages |