Can we modern people understand what ancient Chinese people speak?

Updated on culture 2024-03-13
8 answers
  1. Anonymous users2024-02-06

    Look at which dynasty it is. The ancient Chinese language was the Qin and Han dynasties.

    Before, if you traveled to the Han Dynasty or the Qin Dynasty, you would only hear the Vietnamese accent of the old ancestors, and you would not understand it at all. Middle Chinese is from the Sui, Tang and Song dynasties, similar to the present-day Guangdong and Fujian Chinese dialects.

    I can understand it individually. Modern Chinese is the Ming and Qing dynasties, similar to the current Nanjing dialect. You can find information on this.

    The Chinese language has changed very much for thousands of years, although the characters are the same, but the pronunciation has completely changed, if you go to the current countryside, you will have a deep experience, for example, we have an old man in the countryside here"head"For ta, now our generation has stopped pronouncing such a heavy sound, called sa, how long has it been? What's more, thousands of years of China and countless ethnic fusions have been made. So look for Qin Ji.

    The protagonist can only use words to communicate with the old ancestors when he goes back to the past.,I can't understand what I say.。

  2. Anonymous users2024-02-05

    Since the pronunciation is constantly changing over time, the pronunciation of ancient people speaking is very different from the pronunciation of modern Chinese, so it is difficult for modern people to understand what ancient people are saying.

    However, we can understand the phonetic, grammatical, and lexical characteristics of ancient Chinese through the records of ancient documents, archaeological discoveries, and modern linguistic research, so as to better understand ancient literary works and history and culture.

  3. Anonymous users2024-02-04

    We can't understand what the ancients said, and before the Qin and Han dynasties, the country had not yet been unified, and the language was complicated, so we definitely couldn't understand it.

    Whether the ancients can understand what modern people can understand depends on the times, such as before the Qin and Han dynasties, the country has not yet been unified, and the language is complicated, so it must not be understood; The Han and Jin languages are close to the current Hakka, the Sui and Tang languages are close to Ganzhou dialects, and the Song Dynasty languages are close to the Wu dialects; After the Yuan Dynasty, there is basically no problem, the ** at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the vernacular inside is the words of the ordinary people now, and the pronunciation is close to the current Henan.

    Some of the ancients spoke that we could understand

    The Qing Dynasty was basically the same as it is now. In fact, because of the incomplete integration of languages, even now, different regional dialects cannot be directly understood. In addition, ancient Chinese was not an isolated, static thing, but constantly changing.

    There has long been a consensus in the academic community that the Chinese sound is different from the Tang sound, the Tang sound is different from the Song sound, and the Song sound is different from the Ming and Qing dynasties.

    For example, the word "brother" in modern Chinese originally belongs to the Altaic language family, not the Sino-Tibetan language family. In ancient times, the Chinese language did not exist, and the characters "brother" and "brother" were all spoken, which were obviously brought in by the integration of ethnic minorities such as Xianbei and Di who belonged to the Altaic language family.

  4. Anonymous users2024-02-03

    Can't understand.

    The reason for this is that our language is always improving, and even if the culture is passed down from one generation to another, the script and language are very different from time to time. Modern Mandarin was also slowly established through the vernacular movement after the May Fourth Movement. In ancient times, all dynasties had their own official languages, and if you don't learn them all, you won't be able to communicate at all if you cross randomly.

    Although Yayan is an ancient Mandarin, the older it is, the older it is, even the ancient Mandarin we still can't understand. For example, the authentic reading of the Book of Songs, Tang and Song poems, etc., is not the same as we have today.

    According to research, ancient Chinese pronunciation has evolved roughly through three periods. The period from the Shang and Zhou dynasties to the Western Jin Dynasty is ancient Chinese, and the pronunciation is ancient pronunciation; The period from the Northern and Southern Dynasties to the Song Dynasty is Middle Chinese, and the pronunciation is Middle Chinese; The period from the Yuan Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty is modern Chinese, and the pronunciation is near archaic.

    These three stages of the evolution of ancient Chinese are closely related to the three great changes in history.

    In the last years of the Western Jin Dynasty, the Rebellion of the Eight Kings broke out, which led to the decline of the ** regime, the deterioration of the social economy, and the people's misery. In this context, the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Qian, Qiang, Di and other Hu tribes took the opportunity to enter the Central Plains to establish political power, which was the period of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms in Chinese history.

    From the perspective of modern people, this history of barbarian invasion can also be seen as a great fusion of peoples. Ancient Chinese also evolved in this process of fusion, incorporating part of the Hu language, thus developing into Middle Chinese.

    It is worth mentioning that after the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty, the Han people in the north moved southward, that is, the first southern crossing in Chinese history. After these Han ancestors who originally lived in the Central Plains came to the south, they also brought their purest ancient sounds to the south. Today, Wenzhou, Hokkien, and Cantonese, which sound like bird language to many people, have some pronunciations that are closest to ancient sounds.

  5. Anonymous users2024-02-02

    Students did not use Mandarin as the official language of communication in ancient times, and they also had their official communication, and I believe that they should be able to understand Mandarin.

  6. Anonymous users2024-02-01

    First of all, let's popularize science, there was no such thing as Mandarin in ancient times, Mandarin was unified after liberation, and each dynasty had its own official discourse in ancient times.

  7. Anonymous users2024-01-31

    Antiquity is a very broad concept. Whether you can understand it or not, when and where.

    The northern official dialect of the northerners of the Ming and Qing dynasties is relatively close to our current Mandarin. Mandarin is a dialect based on the Beijing pronunciation and the northern official dialect.

    However, in other regions, because there was no Mandarin promotion at that time, communication was more troublesome - Hokkien, Cantonese, Liling, Hakka, Wu Nong soft language, etc., and now it is almost like a foreign language for northerners.

    To put it simply, the north of the Ming and Qing dynasties can understand some of it. No matter how early it is, it is basically incomprehensible to both the north and the south.

  8. Anonymous users2024-01-30

    Not an accent.

    The ancient pronunciation is very different from modern Mandarin. The so-called "ten miles of different sounds", over a mountain, may not be able to understand each other's speech. In ancient times, there was no Mandarin as a lingua franca, and everyone spoke their own local dialects with different accents, which made it inconvenient to communicate.

    Examples: 1. Different tones.

    The "four tones" of ancient Chinese and modern Chinese are somewhat different. Compared with ancient Chinese, modern Chinese has more flat sounds and less "in" sounds. The four tones of ancient Chinese are Ping, Shang, Go, and Enter.

    The four tones of modern Chinese are Yin Ping, Yang Ping, Shang Sheng, and Go Sheng. The words "up, go, and enter" in ancient Chinese cannot be compared with "up, go" in modern Chinese.

    The four tones of ancient Chinese are also not comparable to the four tones of modern Chinese. Take "into the sound" as an example. There is a sound in ancient Chinese, but there is no "sound" in modern Mandarin, and the ancient words in the sound are transformed into ping, shang, and go to sound.

    For example, the word "duck" is sounded in ancient times, and it is yin ping in modern Mandarin; Another example is the word "hair", which is into the sound in ancient times, and Yin Ping in modern times.

    Second, the initials and finals are different.

    In fact, the initials and finals of ancient Chinese are very different from those of modern Mandarin. Nowadays, the pronunciation in Cantonese and Hakka, as well as the pronunciation of some Chinese words in Korean, will give you a general understanding of the Chinese language in the Tang and Song dynasties.

    It is said that Cantonese has 9 tones and Hakka has 8. Therefore, the "four tones" in ancient Chinese may be more complicated than the four tones in Mandarin.

    As for the Chinese language in the Qin and Han dynasties and even in the pre-Qin period, the difference is even greater.

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