Technical Notes on the Chinese Language Dialects

Phonology of the Seven Major Dialect Groups of Chinese

• ch-intro.htm An introduction to the various Chinese dialects
• mandarin.htm Mandarin Phonology
• wu.htm Wu Phonology
• min.htm Min Phonology
• yue.htm Yue Phonology
• hakka.htm Hakka Phonology
• gan.htm Gan Phonology
• xiang.htm Xiang Phonology

References and Maps

• biblio.htm Recommended readings and reference works consulted whilst writing the articles in this section of the site.
• chinasch.htm Schematic maps of China

Official Romanisation Schemes

Four romanisation systems of the major dialects of Kwangtung (Cantonese, Hakka, Ch'ao-chou and Hai-nan) were invented (Wên-Tzû Kai-Ko [ 文字改革 Writing System Reform ] , 1960)..., p.29, "The Hakka Dialect", Mantaro J. Hashimoto, 1973. ISBN 0-521-20037-7. The Hanyu Pinyin romanisation for Mandarin Chinese was passed as early as 1958.
• bpmf.htm 漢語拼音方案 Chinese (Mandarin) Phoneticisation Scheme
• gzhhpy.htm 廣州話拼音方案 GuangZhou Dialect (Cantonese) Romanisation Scheme
• chaozhou.htm 潮州話 拼音方案 ChaoZhou Dialect Romanisation Scheme
• meixian.htm 梅縣話拼音方案 Meixian Dialect ( 客家 / Kejia / Hakka ) Romanisation Scheme

History

• chindate.htm (Chinese Big5) Rulers of China, past and present, mythical and some that should be mythical.
• chindate-utf8.htm (Unicode UTF8) Rulers of China, past and present, mythical and some that should be mythical.

International Phonetic Association Symbols

• chinipa.htm Some symbols used in Chinese Phonology
• ipacon.htm A chart of the IPA consonants
• vchart.htm A chart of the IPA vowels

Historical Chinese Phonology/Philology

Chinese characters have been used for over three thousand years. However, they do not contain accurate information about how they are pronounced in the past. By far the greatest development was the introduction of initial and rhyme transcription (fanqie) to fix a sound for each character. In the last hundred years, the use of western linguistics has provided us with a glimpse of how Chinese was pronounced 1400 years ago, through the work known as GuangYun (1008 AD), an expanded form of the rhymebook QieYun of 601 AD. Qieyun had been lost until recently when fragments were found in a cave near DunHuang, in north eastern China. It documents the period in Chinese phonology known as Middle Chinese. The sound system of MC is found below with reference to GuangYun, and later Chinese philological ideas of vowel and rhyme classificiation.
• Initials
  The initials are representative characters whose initial phoneme is representative of all sounds begining with that phoneme.
• Guangyun Rhymes
  GuangYun consists of five main volumes, two volumes contain all the rhymes in the Ping Tone because there are so many characters which are in this tone; one volume each for the other three tones (Shang, Qu and Ru). A character is found by selecting the correct tone, the rhyme and the the initial. There are 206 different rhymes listed in all. We provide a list of characters under each main rhyme (irrespective of the tone).
• Inner and Outer Series
  When the later Chinese philologists came to study the phonological information contained within GuangYun, they found that the pronunciations had changed. They began to group similar rhymes together, according to the main vowel and the type of endings. With this grouping, the rhymes then had different vowels to account for. The concept of inner and outer series was used a Chinese solution to distinguish an aspect of the rhyme's vowel that we today would have used phonetic symbols for.
• She
  As mentioned immediately above, the rhyme groupings brought many rhymes together according to their endings. She provided a convenient shorthand.
• Deng
  DengYun or the study of the divisions was a later development, and by far the most difficult and controversial to explain in modern times. Two viewpoints have been given so you can make your own mind up.
• KaiKou and HeKou
  The distinction of an open and close syllable in Chinese philology is important.
• GuangYun Initials
  How 31-51 GuangYun Initials become the Song Dynasty 36 Initials
• Rhyme Tables
  The icing on the cake. See how initials, rhymes, tones, deng and inner/outer series are used.

• 206gyr01.htm
  GuangYun Rimes with supplementary characters from Karlgren's Etudes sur la Phonologie Chinoise. It is hoped that this provides a easy page where character's GuangYun rhyme is easily located within its 61 rows. (Some mistakes have been found, but not corrected - beware!)
• 206rimes.htm
  Similar to the above, except there are none of Karlgren's characters. (Some mistakes have been found, but not corrected - beware!)
• sh-yrime.htm
  ShiYun Rhymes for use in poetry and prosody.
• ch-char.htm
  A brief history of Chinese Character Dictionaries

• reconstr.htm
  Chinese Phonological History - a table summary of dictionaries/lexicons

• cjkvnum.htm
  Chinese Numbers and Phonology in Sino-centric and Sino-zenic countries.

• zhgyyxyj.htm
  An Index to "Études sur la phonologie chinoise " by Bernhard Karlgren

• zhuanke.htm
  Books on Seals and Seal Script

This page was last modified on Thursday 25th April 2002