GuangYun

Historical Chinese Phonology

The GuangYun (GY 廣韻) rhymebook was completed in 1008AD, in the Northern Song Dynasty (北宋 906-1127) and was based upon an earlier book known as Qieyun (QY 切韻), completed in 601 AD in the Sui Dynasty (隋朝 581-618). Prior to this period, the discovery and distinction between the four tones is attributed to Shen Yue (沈約) of the Kingdom of Liang (梁 502-557) in his work SiShengPu (四聲譜), during the Northern and Southern Dynasties period (南北朝 420-581).

Originally, QY contained 192 rhymes. Some of these rhymes developed until 206 rhymes was noted in GY. During the Southern Song Dynasty (南宋 1127-1279), the GY set of rhymes was condensed down to 107 rhymes in the work of Liu Yuan (劉淵) from PingShui (平水) called RenZi XinKanLiBu YunLue (壬子新刊禮部韻略) in 1252. Later, it was further reduced to 106 rhymes[1], and was simply referred to as PingShuiYun (平水韻), or Rimes for Poetry, ShiYun (詩韻). Much later, Chinese philologists then reduced the whole set of rhymes into only 16 representative rhyme categories, or "She" (攝).

GY was published in five volumes, Shang Ping tone (上平聲), Xia Ping tone (下平聲), Shang tone (上聲), Qu tone (去聲), and Ru tone (人聲). It contained about 26000 main character entries in total. Because the characters in the Ping tone category was so large, it was split into two volumes, the first volume having 28 rhymes, from 東 to 山, and the latter having 29 rhymes, from 先 to 凡.

The IPA pronunciations below for the rhymes are after Wang Li (王力, Hanyu Shigao 漢語史稿, 1980, 1996).

16 Rhyme
Headings
206 GuangYun Rhymes
106 PingShui
Rhymes
16 攝
#
IPA
IPA
1. 通
1
,
,
2  
3
2. 江
4
,
,
3. 止
5
,
     
6
,
   
7
   
8
,
     
4. 遇
9
     
10
     
11
,
   
5. 蟹
12
,
     
13    
,
   
14    
,
         
15
,
     
16
,
   
17    
,
   
18
 
19
   
20    
,
   
6. 瑧
21
,
,
22
23    
24
25
27
28
**
7. 山
26
,
,
29
30
31
,
,
32
,
,
33
,
,
34
,
,
8. 效
35
     
36
   
37
     
38
     
9. 果
39
     
40
, ,
   
10. 假
41
, ,
     
11. 宕
42
,
,
43
,
,
12. 梗
44
, , ,
, , ,
45
,
,
46
,
,
47
,
,
13. 曾
48
,
,
   
49
,
,
14. 流
50
     
51
   
52
   
15. 深
53
16. 咸
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61

N.B. The row numbered 26 has been moved further down the table to simplify the She ( 攝 ) classifications, and also, for the order of the PingShui Rhymes to be maintained.

*1 The characters classed under 拯 (上48) was merged 迥 (上47). [Back]


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© Copyright Dylan W.H. Sung This page was created on Saturday 13th January 2001 and recently updated on Sunday 14th January 2001.