What “Ancient“ Chinese Sounded Like - and how we know

How China’s scholars uncovered its ancient imperial language and founded a linguistic tradition that’s uniquely separate from the West. Subscribe for language: Become my patron: ~ Briefly ~ (spoilers!) What Chinese once sounded like and how that was discovered throughout the ages... to be explained, not through the eyes of European linguistics, but in the old and venerable tradition of Chinese linguistics! Since ancient times Chinese scholars have been arguing about the right way to pronounce classic poetry and literature. Here’s how they dug into the past and reconstructed the earlier sounds behind the characters. After a note about my struggles with Chinese phonology, our tale begins in 1842 with Chen Li’s attempt to piece together older Chinese pronunciation. He’s working from a fanqie dictionary put together more than 1200 years earlier by Lu Fayan after a party at his house turned into an argument about the exact pronunciation of ancient rhymes. We’ll look at an example of fanqie, then wander hundreds of years later to see how rime tables presented Chinese phonology in a more systematic way. With these resources in hand, scholars spent centuries convincing everyone that they could reconstruct any syllable and that Chinese had exactly 36 initial consonants. We return to Chen Li’s time to watch him dissect the fanqie and prove that Chinese phonology was more complicated and less understood than previously thought. Then, a Swede named Karlgren will visit China and use information from modern “dialects“, including Sino-Xenic pronunciations, to fill in the fanqie and rime table categories with real sounds. After considering how scholars have built on this work, we end up with tiny snapshots of historical Chinese pronunciation but a good overview of the framework used to investigate it. With one important adjustment: what’s being reconstructed turns out not to be a single language called “Ancient“ Chinese. It’s a period and a categorical system now known as “Middle Chinese“. “Middle“ because there’s an “Old“ Chinese, which is even older, has its own (connected) stories and could be worth a visit. ~ Credits ~ Art, animation, narration and outro music by Josh from NativLang Doc full of sources for claims made and images, music, sfx, fonts used: Music: Dragons and Fireworks by Darren Curtis - Asian Graveyard by Darren Curtis - All The Tea In China by Shane Ivers - Shenyang by Kevin MacLeod - Eastern Thought by Kevin MacLeod - Silver Flame by Kevin MacLeod - Opium by Kevin MacLeod - Crazy Glue by Josh Woodward - Sneaky Snooper by Jason Shaw - Great Unknown by Jason Shaw -