History of the Chinese Language is as old as the Chinese civilization itself. It has changed according to the needs of the Chinese people, and its study has become central to knowing the Chinese culture and mindset.
Most lexicologists categorize all of the variants of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family and believe that there was an seminal language , known as Proto-Sino-Tibetan , similar to Proto-Indo-European ,which has given birth to the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages. The relations between Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages are an area of continuing investigation, as is the effort to regenerate Proto-Sino-Tibetan. The primary problem in this exertion is that, while there is excellent substantiation that makes it possible to rebuild the old sounds of Chinese, there is no scripted validation of the variance between Chinese and proto-Sino-Tibetan. Moreover, some of the languages that would let us remodel Proto-Sino-Tibetan are extremely badly referenced.
Classification of the growth of Chinese is a matter of intellectual argumentation. One of the earliest modules was created by the Sweden's linguist Bernhard Karlgren in the beginning of the 20th century. The system was much amended, but always relied heavily on Karlgren's breakthroughs and know-hows.
Old Chinese or "Archaic Chinese," was the common language of the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC), texts including writings on bronze articles , the poetry and historical writings of the Shijing, Shujing, and Yìjing (I Ching) . Most of the sound components in the Chinese alphabets also provide clues to their Old Chinese vocalizations. The pronunciation of the adopted Chinese characters in Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean also offer useful revelations. Old Chinese was not completely analytic. It had a robust sonant system where aspiration or rough breathing distinguished the consonants, but possibly was still atonal. Reconstruction of Old Chinese was begun by Qing dynasty linguists.
Middle Chinese was used during the Suí, Táng, and Sòng dynasties (7th through 10th centuries AD). It is segmented into early period, reflected by the "Qièyùn" rhyme table (601 AD), and late period (10th century), reflected in the "Guangyùn" rhyme table . Linguists are sure of having reconstructed Middle Chinese sounds. Several sources provide information for the pronunciation of Middle Chinese: modern dialect variations, foreign transliterations, rhyming dictionaries,"rhyming tables" constructed by ancient Chinese philologists to summarize the phonetic system, and Chinese phonetic renderings of alien words. But, these are all provisional reconstructions ; like, scholars have tried to rebuild modern Cantonese from the verses of contemporary Cantopop would give a really incorrect idea of the language.
Till the 20th century, most Chinese only spoke their native local variety of Chinese. Although there was the mingling of officials and commoners speaking various Chinese dialects, Nanjing Mandarin was important through the officially Manchu-speaking Qing Empire . The orthoepy academies the Empire established in the 17th century to make pronunciation match to the Qing capital Beijing's standard, but had little success. The last 50 years of the Qing's during the late 19th century, the Beijing Mandarin finally superseded Nánjing Mandarin in the imperial court. However the general population, spoke wide varieties of Mandarin and a single standard of Mandarin did not exist. In southern China non Mandarin speakers continued to use their various dialects for every day life.
With the creation of an education system based on Standard Mandarin as the language of instruction the situation changed. So, Mandarin is now the universal language for all people in mainland China and on Táiwan. But as Hong Kong was a British colony and Standard Mandarin was never used, hence in Hong Kong, the language daily life remains the local Cantonese , but Mandarin is becoming progressively influential.
The development of the Chinese languages from primitive historical times to the present has been complex and been influenced by many geographical and socio-political matters. Today Chinese is spoken by the
highest number of people in the world and is one of the
major languages in the United Nations.
