Early Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese
Ancient Chinese
漢語 hɑnH ŋɨʌX
Native to	China
Era	Northern and Southern dynasties, Sui dynasty, Tang dynasty, Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Song dynasty
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Middle Chinese
Early forms	Old Chinese Eastern Han Chinese
Writing system	Chinese characters
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Linguist List	ltc
Glottolog	midd1344
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Middle Chinese
Traditional Chinese	中古漢語
Simplified Chinese	中古汉语
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ Wade–Giles chung1-ku3 Han4-yü3 IPA [ʈʂʊ́ŋkù xânỳ] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Jūnggú Honyúh IPA [tsóŋkǔː hɔ̄ːny̬ː] Jyutping Zung1gu2 Hon3jyu5 Southern Min Tâi-lô tiong-kóo Hàn-gú

Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	Zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ
Wade–Giles	chung1-ku3 Han4-yü3
IPA	[ʈʂʊ́ŋkù xânỳ]
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanization	Jūnggú Honyúh
IPA	[tsóŋkǔː hɔ̄ːny̬ː]
Jyutping	Zung1gu2 Hon3jyu5
Southern Min
Tâi-lô	tiong-kóo Hàn-gú

Middle Chinese, formerly known as Ancient Chinese, is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the Qieyun, a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The fanqie method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid 12th-century Yunjing and other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticated and convenient analysis of the Qieyun phonology. The rime tables attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of the Qieyun. Linguists sometimes refer to the system of the Qieyun as Early Middle Chinese and the variant revealed by the rime tables as Late Middle Chinese.

The dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual sounds. The Swedish linguist Bernard Karlgren believed that the dictionaries recorded a speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties, and produced a reconstruction of its sounds. However, based on the more recently recovered preface of the Qieyun, most scholars now believe that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Northern and Southern dynasties period. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of the preceding system of Old Chinese phonology (1st millennium BC).

The Middle Chinese system is often used as a framework for the study and description of various modern varieties of Chinese. Branches of the Chinese family such as Mandarin (including Standard Chinese, based on the speech of Beijing), Yue (including Cantonese) and Wu can be largely treated as divergent developments from the Qieyun system. The study of Middle Chinese also provides for a better understanding and analysis of Classical Chinese poetry, such as the study of Tang poetry, in addition to the influences Middle Chinese had on early forms of Japanese.

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