 Old Chinese ( 上古汉语 ), refers to the Chinese spoken during the Zhou Dynasty ( 周朝 10th century BC – 256 BC ). The term is usually used in Historical Chinese phonology, which tries to reconstruct the way in which Old Chinese was pronounced.
Since Old Chinese was the language spoken by Chinese when classical works such as the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius, and the Tao Te Ching ( 道德经 ) were written, Old Chinese was preserved for the next two millennia in the form of Classical Chinese, a style of written Chinese that emulates the grammar and vocabulary of Old Chinese as presented in those works. Classical Chinese was for two millennia the usual language used for official purposes in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. However, there is great variation within Classical Chinese, based mainly on when something was written, and the Classical Chinese of more recent writers, as well as that found outside of China, would probably be difficult for someone from Confucius's era to understand.
The phonology of Old Chinese was imperfectly preserved in Classical Chinese, because the way the Chinese writing system indicates pronunciation is much less clear than the way an alphabet shows it. As a result, the pronunciation of Old Chinese can only be tentatively reconstructed, and is unknown outside academic circles.
 There is much dispute over the precise way in which Old Chinese was pronounced. It is, however, generally agreed that Old Chinese had consonant clusters such as mr- and -ts, which do not occur in any modern Chinese dialect. Moreover, many modern linguists specializing in historical Chinese phonology contend that Old Chinese was not a tonal language: the tones of Middle Chinese (and therefore modern spoken Chinese) evolved from consonants that have since changed or disappeared. |
