From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 16:12:48 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <1992Apr16.215740.24511@cbnewsi.cb.att.com> hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com
(hua.t.lin) writes (concerning my thumbnail sketch of the history of Chinese):

>This scenario contradicts the assertion that classical chinese was a
>spoken language. If the dialects separated from it, and since it was a
>written representation of speech, it would be fair to expect that one of
>the dialects would be very close to the classical chinese (which is not
>true).  Since the dialects diverged about 1500 years ago how did
>all the dialects separated from classical Chinese 2500 years ago,
>which was supposed to be the writing for a spoken language? If your point is
>that 2500 years ago the spoken and written Chinese diverged, then it
>would be fair to believe that written Chinese was not a representation of
>spoken Chinese. At least the written Chinese was not a full, complete
>and total representation of spoken Chinese. (We both had agreed that
>classical chinese originated and was influenced by spoken chinese).

I went back to Jerry Norman's _Chinese_ last night to get the story straight,
and found that I had misremembered the time periods involved.

Classical Chinese is basically the written language of the Zhan1guo2 
[Warring States], Qin2, and Han4 periods-- that is, from about 475 BC to
AD 220.  This language was a good reflection of the spoken Chinese of 
the time, at least to the extent that literary languages ever reflect
the spoken vernacular.

The spoken Chinese of this time was very unlike any modern dialect.
Examples: it probably had initial consonant clusters, and a wider range of
consonant endings; it may not have had tones at all; at an early stage,
it may even have had case (noun and pronoun inflections).  

Many of the phonetic distinctions made in spoken Chinese have been lost.
This is why ancient Chinese could get by with so many monosyllabic words,
and the modern language has had to move to polysyllables in order to reduce 
ambiguity.

Simple time, 2000 years of it, thus accounts for the distance between 
Classical Chinese and any modern dialect.  

The origin of the modern dialects can be traced to the period between
the Han4 and the Sui2 dynasties (AD 581), a period in which northern and
southern China were disunited.  However, all the modern dialects have 
been greatly influenced by the literary standards of the Tang2 dynasty
(618-907).  The regional reading pronunciations of Classical Chinese
all go back to the Tang2 standard.

It must be emphasized that ALL of the modern dialects have changed greatly.
You seem to be thinking that one of them would stay pretty much the same
and the others diverged from it.  But that isn't what happened.

[comparing all this to Latin]
>No real disagreement here too. However, I do not like the word derive in
>that it implies that some commitees decided to modify or change the
>language. Also it implies the Franch, Spainish, Portugese, Italian,
>Romanian did not speak until the Romans came along and gave them Latin
>to modify and adapt to their liking. Wouldn't it be fair to think that
>they all spoke a similar language long before the Romans came along with
>Latin which merged with their language? The point is that if these languages
>derived from Latin why didn't English, German, Greek, Egytian, Turkish derive
>from Latin. After all, the Romans were all over the coasts of mediteranian.

You're virtually asking for a history of the Roman Empire here.
In brief: before the Romans conquered them, the Gauls, Iberians, Dacians,
Etruscans, etc. spoke their own, very different, languages.  In some cases 
(e.g. Gaul, parts of Italy) these were related to Latin; in some case not.  
These people came to speak Latin, and the modern languages are all descended 
from Latin.  Pre-Latin languages may have had some influence on them, but 
nothing like that of Latin (or even that of later invaders, such as the 
Germanic tribes in France, or the Arabs in Spain).

In the eastern Mediterranean, Latin was never able to displace Greek or
Egyptian; and after the empire split up, Latin lost its cultural and 
administrative importance in these regions.  Arabic and Turkish were
introduced into the region by later conquests.