Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1814: Middle Chinese Pronunciation Sample

This is indeed the biggest problem in linguistics, but as Zhou Zhi said, until now, everyone is still accustomed to using a set of phonetic symbols to record the pronunciation and tones of words during field surveys.

Of course, this set of phonetic symbols is much more complicated than the pinyin of Mandarin, and may even be more complicated than Cantonese, which retains the most Middle Ages sounds and rhymes.

In later times, there was a sudden "orthodoxy dispute" between Cantonese and Mandarin. Many northerners believed that Cantonese could not be the "authentic Chinese" of ancient times. Because Guangdong was located in a remote area, the Cantonese people at that time could only be regarded as "foreigners" outside the Central Plains. Therefore, their speech must have been as awkward as foreigners speaking Chinese, and the pronunciation left behind must have been very different from the language of Chang'an and Shaanxi in the Tang and Song dynasties.

This statement seems to make sense, but it is actually a kind of speculation based on free judgment. The biggest drawback in studying literary and historical issues lies in "free judgment."

There are two main legends about the origin of Cantonese. One is that it originated from the elegant language of the Central Plains in the north, and the other is that it originated from the Chu language of the Chu State. However, from the Han Dynasty to the Tang and Song Dynasties, the Han people from the Central Plains migrated continuously to Lingnan, which promoted the development and standardization of Cantonese.

In particular, the Yongjia Rebellion and the fall of the two Song dynasties led to three waves of immigration in Guangdong Province. The northern Central Plains language continued to impact the local language. The scholars and people from the "noble families" in the Central Plains gradually influenced the direction of political, economic and cultural development in the Lingnan region, and promoted the development of Cantonese.

By the Song Dynasty, Cantonese had become a language that corresponded to the pronunciation of Middle Chinese and had some independent vocabulary. It is almost the same as the modern Cantonese dialect and has laid the foundation for the modern Cantonese dialect.

At the same time, after it was finalized, during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the influence of the Central Plains suddenly decreased. During the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols moved their capital to Dadu, located in the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, and promoted the local dialect as the official language, which led to the increasing difference between the Central Plains language and the Middle Chinese. At that time, the Central Plains language developed rapidly towards the BJ Mandarin. The most notable feature was the rapid disappearance of the entering tone, and the emergence of light tones that did not belong to the traditional four tones of "ping, shang, qu and ru". This change has been retained in today's Mandarin, while the finalized Cantonese was not influenced by the Yuan Dynasty and developed independently.

By the Ming and Qing dynasties, the final rhyme of Central Plains Mandarin disappeared further, and the initial consonant of jiqixi was completely palatalized to jqx.

All these are preserved in many dialects. In general, Cantonese is one of the southern dialects that retains more elements of Middle Chinese. The most prominent feature is that it has relatively completely preserved the entering tone that was prevalent in Middle Chinese. The more critical evidence is that the initial consonants, finals and tones of Cantonese are highly consistent with the official rhyme book "Guangyun" of the Song Dynasty.

Chen Li, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, even believed that the tones of the Guangzhou dialect were consistent with the rhyme book "Qieyun" of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and that "for more than a thousand years, people from the Central Plains have migrated to Guangzhou, and today's Cantonese dialect is actually the dialect of the Central Plains during the Sui and Tang Dynasties." Nan Huaijin also believed that Cantonese was the national language of the Tang Dynasty.

This is not to say that Cantonese is so great, nor is it to say that the official language after the Yuan Dynasty is so bad, nor is it to say that languages ​​with complex phonetic and rhyme systems are more advanced, and languages ​​with simpler phonetic and rhyme systems are more inferior.

On the contrary, it is a normal rule for language to develop from simple to complex and then from complex to simple.

Even in Cantonese, there are many "lazy" pronunciations in Hong Kong Cantonese, which is a simplification of traditional Cantonese.

So this was originally an academic issue of language evolution, but it eventually evolved into a dispute over the "superiority" of the languages ​​used in different regions in later generations. Zhou Zhi really felt speechless.

In fact, from the perspective of truly pure scholars, this question is very simple. If you want to study the official language of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, then you don’t need to study Cantonese. However, if you want to study the official phonology before the Song Dynasty, then there is no doubt that although Cantonese is difficult to correspond to the pronunciation of ancient Chinese in the Yuan Dynasty and after the Yuan Dynasty, it can correspond to the pronunciation of the "Guangyun" of the Song Dynasty and is the best "specimen" for studying Middle Chinese.

Then, Guangyun was developed from Qieyun in the Tang Dynasty, so it is also of great reference significance for studying Tangyun.

The most direct application of rhyme is in poetry. Even in ancient prose, as the saying goes, "Literature is like looking at a mountain, and you don't like it to be flat," it actually has rhythmic ups and downs.

The candidates for imperial examinations in the Tang and Song dynasties all regarded rhythm as a stumbling block, just like the English Level 4 and Level 6 for college students today, which was a required content. If one used the wrong rhythm in the examination, then the test would be in vain.

In the Song Dynasty, the imperial court even allowed students taking the imperial examinations to bring "Qieyun" into the examination room as a reference book. Su Dongpo learned rhyme from the Taoist priests in Beijiyuan since he was a child. When he was old, he was still ridiculed by Li Qingzhao for writing lyrics without following rhythm. All these show the importance of rhyme in Tang and Song literature.

Therefore, it is understandable that Cantonese, which inherited the most from Qieyun, has a very important position in the study of Medieval phonology.

The Cantonese pronunciation system is relatively complex, with nineteen initial consonants, nine nuclei, eight codas, fifty-six finals, and the tones include Yinping, Yinshang, Yinqu, Yangping, Yangshang, Yangqu, Yinru, Zhongru, and Yangru.

Cantonese is also divided into regions, with Wuzhou dialect as the representative. Its phonetic system has as many as 24 initial consonants and 58 finals.

But even though there are already a lot, it is still not enough. In traditional Chinese phonology, the monk Shou Wen in the late Tang Dynasty created thirty representative characters for initial consonants, which are called the basic initial consonant system of the Tang Dynasty. The people of the Song Dynasty also created the "Rhyme Chart", which has a total of thirty-six letters on the rhyme chart, which is also attributed to Shou Wen. This is the famous "Shou Wen Thirty-six Characters" in phonology.

After much research, later scholars came up with various plans, and finally Wang Li and other bigwigs determined it to be thirty-three.

This is how academic research works. Zhou Zhi and the old man were chatting as if they were just having a casual conversation, and as they talked, the direction of the research seemed to become gradually clear.

"Then I will follow Mr. Gao Benhan's approach and collect samples of local dialects. However, this time we will use sounds, and then combine them with Guangyun research to analyze and collect syllables that can be reconstructed, and express the thirty-six characters of Shouwen and the Qieyun finals with sounds."

"After we find the pronunciation of initials and finals, the work is not over yet," said Gu. "We still have to deduce the initials and finals that are not in the sample, and at the same time, we have to read out each character according to the Guangyun fanqie."

In addition to the initial consonants, the final part of Pinyin also includes the combination of the initial consonant, the main consonant, and the final consonant. For example, the pronunciation of "yaoyueyou" in Mandarin is the combination of the initial consonant, the main consonant, and the final consonant.

Middle Chinese is even more complicated. For example, Hakka and Cantonese also contain m in the final consonant. For example, the Cantonese word "three" is pronounced as sam. There are also p, t, k, which are retained in Hakka, Cantonese, Gan, Fujian and other dialects.

In addition, there is a glottal stop, which is a weakening of the three entering tone codas in Middle Chinese. It does not even exist in Cantonese, but is retained in Gan and Wu.

The two were originally discussing methods, but then the conversation turned to academic discussions. By the time they realized they had already been talking for a long time, they quickly pulled the topic back to the original topic.