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The earliest historical linguistic evidence of the spoken Chinese language dates back approximately 4500 years, [1] while examples of the writing system that would become written Chinese are attested in a body of inscriptions made on bronze vessels and oracle bones during the Late Shang period (c. 1250 – 1050 BCE), [2] [3] with the very oldest dated to c. 1200 BCE.
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. [ a ] The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, in the Late Shang period.
A Mandarin Chinese and Miao mixed language Maojia: 猫家话: 貓家話: A Qo-Xiong Miao and Chinese dialects mixed language Shaozhou Tuhua: 韶州土话: 韶州土話: A group of distinctive Chinese dialects in South China, including Yuebei Tuhua and Xiangnan Tuhua. It incorporates several Chinese dialects, as well as Yao languages. Tangwang ...
The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE, during the Late Shang. [11] The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching. [12]
The Old Chinese voiceless lateral and nasal initials yielded a * tʰ initial in eastern dialects and * x in western ones. [34] [35] By the Eastern Han, the Old Chinese voiced lateral had also evolved to * d or * j, depending on syllable type. [36] The gap was filled by Old Chinese * r, which yielded Eastern Han * l and Middle Chinese l. [37]
The Chinese language has always consisted of a wide variety of dialects; hence prestige dialects and linguae francae have always been needed. Confucius (c. 551 – c. 479 BC) referred to yayan 'elegant speech' modeled on the dialect of the Zhou dynasty royal lands rather than regional dialects; texts authored during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) also refer to tongyu (通語 'common ...
The voiced initials of Middle Chinese are retained in Wu dialects such as Suzhou and Shanghai, as well as Old Xiang dialects and a few Gan dialects, but have merged with voiceless initials elsewhere. [ 95 ] [ 96 ] Southern Min varieties have an unrelated series of voiced initials resulting from devoicing of nasal initials in syllables without ...
Ba–Shu Chinese was first described in the book Fangyan from the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–8 CE) and represented one of the earliest splits from Old Chinese. [1] [2] This makes Ba-Shu Chinese similar to Min Chinese, which also diverged from Old Chinese, rather than Middle Chinese like other varieties of Chinese.