Talk:Old Chinese

message: It seemed odd to use such a particular form of the Tao Te Ching, but the latinized name for Kǒng Fūzǐ, so I changed it. -Acjelen 17:45, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Neither Tao Te Ching is "odd". In English, "Kǒng Fūzǐ" is. If it's confusing or offends sensibilities, see  and . Yes, certain projects like our Vietnam articles have completely ignored that. No, we shouldn't call him "Kǒng Fūzǐ" instead of Confucius ormaybe a century from nowKongzi. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: When did it stop being called Archaic Chinese and start being called Old Chinese? Was there a press release? Ashibaka tock 03:08, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: LOL, is such a thing worth a press release? I prefer Archaic Chinese nontheless. -- G.S.K.Lee 16:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Me too, but the article says: "Old Chinese (formerly called Archaic Chinese)" Ashibaka tock 16:20, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The standard term in English today is indeed "Old Chinese." However, the article is weak and full of inaccuracies. I'll work on it when I can.Chris B 07:32, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is Old Chinese also considered 雅言, yǎyán? --Jade P. 2008 (talk) 13:05, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Old?

message: :Category:Extinct languages of Asia is itself a category within :Category:Extinct languages (talk pages themselves are not normally categorized.) — Robert Greer (talk) 09:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:Extinct languages]] ''vs.'' [[:Category:Extinct languages of Asia]]  

message: Nice work. This article has improved a lot since the last time I checked. Thanks to everyone who edited, especially White whirlwind. Asoer (talk) 09:07, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nice work! 

message: What's the difference between the two sets of nasals?Cromulant (talk) 18:28, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The ones on the left (with diacritics) are voiceless.  White Whirlwind  咨  20:09, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Two sets of nasals

message: *kʷʰenʔ seems quite similar to PIE *kwo- from which derived, among others, Tocharian B ku (oblique kwen) that may have contributed as a loanword. 95.14.155.213 (talk) 19:08, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: In "Tocharian Loan Words in Old Chinese", Lobotsky says there's a "pretty good phonetic resemblance", but rejects a connection because of the ST etymology of the word.  Kanguole 20:16, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible IE loanword? 

message: What sound is denoted by the romanization "C-" that appears in some words in this article? Please describe. -- 92.224.246.50 (talk) 18:41, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point.  I've added a note to the first occurrence.  Kanguole 19:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Kanguole, maybe add a similar one for any "N-"'s while you're at it?  White Whirlwind  咨  03:50, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think there are any instances in the article.  There's a discussion of explanations of the voiced/voiceless alternation in the Word formation section, but it doesn't go into the proposals in detail.  Kanguole 20:09, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "C-"? 

message: Does anyone have the necessary knowledge of adding the pronunciation of the quoted words from other Chinese dialects? Are there any studies on the mutation rate of words in these languages? Could be someone's PhD work. Sorry I am no expert, but it may help the article. 81.157.75.228 (talk) 02:30, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Words from other Chinese dialects and mutation rates 

message: Baxter & Sagart (2014:114) describe an East/West isogloss.
* *l̥ˁ- > *xˁ-: western dialect (Ji, Yan, Shi, Yu kingdoms). This is attested in Bai as well (Lee & Sagart 2008)
* *l̥ˁ- > *tʰˁ-: eastern dialect (Qing, Xu kingdoms; present-day Shandong and Jiangsu)
On p.264:
* *-r > *-j in Shandong (compare *-r > -n in Middle Chinese). Occurs in Chu-Qu and Min, where [i] corresponds to MC -n (p.319).
— Stevey7788 (talk) 22:27, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old Chinese dialects 

message: Would this be fair to add to this article? "Studies done on the Late Zhou period concluded that from a typological point of view, Old Chinese was more similar to modern East Asian languages like Gyarong, Khmer or Atayal than to it’s daughter language Middle Chinese"? I see a mention of the Middle Chinese similarities to Austro-Asiatic but not Old Chinese. How would you word this according to Wikipedia?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Easy772 (talk • contribs) 22:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: This quote, from Sagart (1999) p13, refers to his proposed root structure with minor syllables, which is still controversial – see for example Ting Pang-Hsin's review of the book.  In this article there's a brief mention of initial clusters being controversial, and there's some discussion of Sagart's proposal in Reconstructions of Old Chinese.  Kanguole 00:25, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Typology 

message: "When pursuing OC and TB/ST etyma down to their roots, one often seems to hit AA bedrock, that is, a root shared with AA"
:Axel Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (University of Hawai’i Press, 2007) page 4
Would also like to mention this along with the Sagart quote. Can you link me the review of Sagart's work?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Easy772 (talk • contribs) 22:47, 13 June 2015‎ (UTC)
:I have reverted the quotes added to the lead.  Both are unclear without considerable explanation.  Both reflect personal positions, and singling them out gives them undue weight.  In any case, the lead is supposed to be a summary of the body of the article; it is not the place to add additional material.
:Although both authors mention Austroasiatic languages, their points are otherwise unrelated.  Sagart compares his proposed OC root structure to modern Khmer, Atayal and rGyalrong, a comparison that is less useful to most readers than the outline that follows it.  The jury is still out on his proposal.  For this overview article, only a brief mention is warranted.  By the way, have you read Ting's note?  If not, you should not be citing it.
:Schuessler is talking about an AA substrate yielding a layer of loanwords in OC.  The article already discusses loanwords from AA and other groups.  Schuessler assigns a greater weight to the AA component than other authors; there is no reason to single him out here.  Kanguole 01:48, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: So because Schuessler has a different view we shouldn't "Single him out"? I think all views should be heard. There are similarities/affinities/commonalities between OC and AA, this is what the authors are saying as they would explain in an abstract or results section of a research paper. Many linguists have noted similarities between AA and OC extensively and it deserves to be noted in layman's terms suited for an Encyclopedia. I am beginning to think I am going to need formal mediation in order to get these facts onto Wikipedia. --Easy772 (talk) 06:27, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Note: This formal mediation occurred. See Talk:Shang_dynasty#Language. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Austro-Asiatic and Old Chinese shared root

message: I have reverted changes of some of the OC forms from Baxter (1992) to Baxter & Sagart (2014).  In this overview article, while mentioning the diversity of opinions, we should use a system that is close to the broad consensus in the field, and at present that would be Baxter (1992).  The system of Baxter & Sagart (2014) advances a number of bold ideas that are controversial and yet to be fully evaluated by other scholars, and certainly do not yet have the acceptance of the the ideas underlying Baxter (1992).  Kanguole 00:05, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: If the guy himself disagrees with his previous work, that's noteworthy even if avoiding  focus shunts the revision into a footnote instead of the running text. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reconstruction system 

message: Is it me or does Baxter need to restudy Min Chinese and Chinese dialects in general. I propose that Wikipedia should replace Baxter's transliterations of Old Chinese sample texts with Zheng-Zhang-Shang-Fang's own system. My reasons are-
1: Baxter is American whilst Zheng-Zhang is Chinese.
2: When I see three words in a row that each have consonant clusters containing j ( *ɡjə *tjits *njəjʔ ), I know for a fact that Baxter is nuts. 
3: The above consonant clusters have no foundation/basis for their occurrence in this particular system.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Idielive (talk • contribs) 18:42, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The j is used here in the IPA sense, representing a palatal approximant (like English "y").  It is fairly common to reconstruct this as the source of Middle Chinese division III.  Though several authors have challenged it, they all have different representations of the distinction, e.g. Zhengzhang posits long vowels in the OC sources of non-division III syllables.  Kanguole 22:54, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: In particular, compare the overwhelming amount of -i- in modern Chinese words. That's what's being represented, not the sound of English J. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

text: For what it's worth, it's Zhangzheng Shangfang... or Chang-cheng Shang-fang if you're from Taiwan and over 60 or a time traveler from Eisenhower's State Department. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Baxter System 

message: What is sound or meaning of "N"?  For example, /*N-qʷʰˤra/--Propatriamori (talk) 13:08, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It represents prenasalization or else an otherwise unknown nasal consonant.  White Whirlwind  咨  16:11, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "*N-" meaning 

message: Scheussler (ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese) lists three proposed etymologies of this word.  Zhang ("Chinese Etyma for River", JCL 1998) analyses them in depth, and makes a strong case against the Mongolian etymology.  Therefore it would be better to use less contentious etymologies as examples.  Kanguole 11:00, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology of 河 "river" 

message: While it is well-known that some Chinese linguists, accepted as authorities, have defended their reconstructions (such as Wang 1957 & 1985, Suen, Guo, all without compound consonant initials) by rejecting well-accepted forms of evidence such as shared phono-radicals (諧聲), would it not be more comprehensive to conver their views in more detail in this article?  Their approach, much more orthodox in terms of Chinese philology, are still being refined by a considerable number of scholars.Y11971alex (talk) 10:13, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is an overview.  That level of detail might be better suited to the Reconstructions of Old Chinese article, or perhaps Old Chinese phonology.  Kanguole 10:44, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: More recent scholarship has endorsed the presence of Chinese inscriptions up to the mid-Shang period (c. 13-14th c. BCE?) on bronzes (see 中國史新論：古代文明的形成分冊 p. 219, Hwang 2016; "漢字起源與先秦漢字文化圈形成的初步探索", Chen 2016).  Though highly symbolic/decorative in fashion, at least one example seems to represent language and can be compared with later inscriptions and interpreted as denoting the owner/maker.  An oracle bone discovered in Zhengzhou in the 50s (subsequently lost) has been photographed and dated to the early Shang period, capitaled at Bo (亳).  This position is endorsed by Hwang 2016 but challenged by Takashima in his article in Writing and Literacy in Early China, edited (?) by Feng and Branner 2011.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Y11971alex (talk • contribs) 10:33, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Maker marks have a long history, but there is no generally-accepted example of language before Anyang.  Kanguole 10:44, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: The article by Chen (2016) has made a case for some bronzes bearing language before Anyang.  I would urge you to take a look at it, if you have not already. Y11971alex (talk) 15:14, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: In highly speculative topics like OC reconstructions, Wikipedia articles will naturally never be current, as it takes time for views to become mainstream. Cool your jets a bit.  White Whirlwind  咨  16:55, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: The pre-Anyang examples seem to be mostly isolated symbols that may or may not be related to later characters, apart from the Wucheng inscriptions (language unknown) and the Zhengzhou fragment you mentioned above.  Kanguole 17:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not my intention to disrupt the qualities of an encyclopaedic article.  But these examples have been known for years now (the 80s at the latest), and at least one or two seem fairly secure as pre-Anyang examples of Chinese inscriptions.  In the Digital Archives of Bronze Images and Inscriptions (http://bronze.asdc.sinica.edu.tw/) maintained by the Academia Sinica (of Taiwan), under the heading of NB0255 one can see for oneself such an example.  Queries in said source returns 21 entries that bear inscriptions identified to be Chinese, and two bear two characters or more that, apart from structural similarity, are combined in exactly the same way as typifies later wares.  From what I've seen, there has been little literature that challenges the validity of either the linguistic affinity or dating of these inscriptions.  I will gladly be corrected if this is not the case.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Y11971alex (talk • contribs) 12:35, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: With a claim as significant as Erligang-era literacy, the burden of proof is surely the other way round, but I see Qiu Xigui saying that the pre-Anyang material is too limited, disputed and fragmentary to say much about the development of the script. Presumably that would be even more true for attestation of the language.  Kanguole 17:42, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: The claim is significant insofar as it appears to be evidence, or at least is thusly presented, of an earlier stage of the language recorded.  It is not significant over the language Old Chinese per se, because it (or a form leading to it) must have existed by this point.  It is difficult to accept that these markings, which share what appear to be lexical similarities with later inscriptions, found on the same kind of vessels and using the same glyphs in similar or identical combinations, should be regarded in complete isolation from later inscriptions.  One can perhaps understand if this finding is more relevant the development of the Chinese script, but in the present article where the existence of the script defines the upper bound of an "Old" language I still feel that, even if these inscriptions were not intended to record language, they still contain meaning that later would be expressed by language with the same characters, unless one were to posit that a two-glyph inscription only acquired a reading after it became common to notate vessels with such a combination.  My pet theory is that such characters almost aways appear in a certain order—XY—and never in the reverse—YX—, which suggests that something similar to syntax is present.  Qiu Xigui himself published an article in 1990 (裘錫圭，〈釋“無終”〉1990 年太倉第八屆古文字學會議論文，收入《裘錫圭學術文化隨筆》（北京：中國青年出版社，1999），頁64-73。) arguing that such an inscription dating to around a century before the first Anyang-type should be read as language.  In any event, I have been mistaken it it came across that I wanted to add writing evidence to this page all the way up to the putative oracles from the Erligang Period. I am suggesting only to add the mid-Shang period bronze inscriptions that are superficially similar or identical to later ones.Y11971alex (talk) 13:38, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: But this article is about the language, not the development of the script – there are other articles for that.  All languages existed before they were reduced to writing, but linguistic descriptions can only be based on some record of them.  In this context, the significance of the oracle bone inscriptions is not the script in itself, but that they attest the language: they contain whole sentences of readable text, enabling scholars to study the syntax, vocabulary and even phonology of the language.  That is just not possible with the earlier symbols.  Kanguole 22:52, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Mainland China views and early Chinese inscriptions

message: Baxter-Sagart have released their newer reconstruction based on the "pharyngeal theory", which is overall a better reconstruction IMO. And please take a look at this sentence:
其*ɡjə 至*tjits 爾*njəjʔ 力*C-rjək 也*ljajʔ 其*ɡjə 中*k-ljuŋ 非*pjəj 爾*njəjʔ 力*C-rjək 也*ljajʔ. Do you really think it's normal for a language to have 11 consecutive syllables all having a "j glide"? At least I don't. And in the newer reconstruction, the sentence goes something like this: 其*ɡə 至*tits 爾*nərʔ 力*k.rək 也*lajʔ 其*ɡə 中*truŋ 非*pəj 爾*nərʔ 力*k.rək 也*lajʔ, which is way more natural. Mteechan (talk) 16:10, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is an overview of Old Chinese, so it should identify where there is disagreement, but also use a transcription that is close to the broad consensus in the field.  At present, Baxter (1992) is closest to that consensus.  The proposals of Baxter & Sagart (2014) are still too controversial to be presented as consensus.  In the case of pharyngealized initials, they acknowledge this themselves (pp. 73–74), conceding the oddness of a system in which every non-pharyngealized consonant has a pharyngealized counterpart, and suggesting that it may have been an unstable system that lasted only for a short period.  Kanguole 18:04, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Going to have to agree with Mteechan. Wiktionary has already accepted Baxter-Sagart 2014 as one of its standard Old Chinese transcription systems. It is much more complete than Baxter 1992 and, if we want WP to avoid taking a position on pharyngealization, we can always mark A and B syllables with superscripts instead. Otherwise, the much improved interpretations of clusters and presyllables, which put OC in closer concord with the rest of Sino-Tibetan, are essential for an accurate depiction of Old Chinese at any stage before tones kick in and ruin all the fun.TheLateDentarthurdent (talk) 17:20, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: What Wiktionary does isn't particularly relevant.  The initial clusters and presyllables are another innovation (indeed the main one) of the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction that is being considered by other scholars, but does not represent consensus at this time, and their choices and rationale have been disputed in reviews of the book.  The later tones are a different issue, being broadly accepted as reflexes of *-ʔ and *-s, which are included in the Baxter (1992) reconstruction.  Kanguole 18:29, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: What you feel isn't particularly relevant, except insofar as you revert edits quite a bit. If you're correct that Baxter's own revisions of his own system are problematic and people prefer his old system, actually mention that in the article and actually provide  for your supposed academic consensus instead of simply claiming that you're correct in place of (now at least three) other editors who disagree with your personal opinion about the state of the field. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update the reconstruction IPA 

message: Much of the recently added material is about the history of Chinese in general, rather than specifically about the history of Old Chinese.  There is also undue emphasis on trying to divide that overall history into contiguous slices with identified transition points.  But the actual research has focussed on the isolated periods for which there is data, e.g. for phonology the phono-semantic compound characters and the Shijing (Old Chinese), the Qieyun (Middle Chinese) or the Zhongyuan Yinyun (Old Mandarin).  Also, all of the statements in this article were supported by references, and this should be preserved.  Kanguole 08:46, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Unfortunately, the "line-and-a-cite" level of thoroughness isn't technically required, it's merely "encouraged" (WP:WHYCITE). If I had my way that policy would be worded more strongly.  White Whirlwind  咨  16:59, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: There is, however, no need for citations in the lead, if it is a summary of the article (as it should be) and all the detail in the body of the article is supported by references.  Kanguole 21:16, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

text: Disagreed. An encyclopedia article on the language and not its historiography should precisely contextualize the current research into a thematic overview of the topic, without undue emphasis on only the best attested surviving works or the minutiae of academic arguments. Future editors, presumably there was such helpful context in the article prior to these comments by Kang. They could very likely be consulted to help improve the current article. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  History section