Xianbei people
| Xianbei | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 鮮卑 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 鲜卑 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Xiānbēi |
| Gwoyeu Romatzyh | Shianbei |
| Wade–Giles | Hsien1-pei1 |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Yale Romanization | Sīn bēi |
| Southern Min | |
| Hokkien POJ | Tshinn-pi |
| Middle Chinese | |
| Middle Chinese | Sjen-pjie |
| Old Chinese | |
| Baxter-Sagart | *S[a]r-pe |
The Xianbei (Chinese: 鮮卑; Wade–Giles: Hsien-pi) were proto-Mongols residing in what became today's eastern Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Northeast China. Along with the Xiongnu, they were one of the major nomadic groups in northern China during the Han Dynasty and subsequent dynastic periods. They eventually established their own northern dynasties, including the Northern Wei founded in the 4th century AD by the Tuoba clan.
It is generally accepted that the Xianbei spoke a language related to the Mongolic languages. Claus Schönig writes:
The Xianbei derived from the context of the Donghu, who are likely to have contained the linguistic ancestors of the Mongols. Later branches and descendants of the Xianbei include the Tabghach and Khitan, who seem to have been linguistically Para-Mongolic. [...] Opinions differ widely as to what the linguistic impact of the Xianbei period was. Some scholars (like Clauson) have preferred to regard the Xianbei and Tabghach (Tuoba) as Turks, or even as Bulghar Turks, with the implication that the entire layer of early Turkic borrowings in Mongolic would have been received from the Xianbei, rather than from the Xiongnu. However, since the Mongolic (or Para-Mongolic) identity of the Xianbei is increasingly obvious in the light of recent progress in Khitan studies, it is more reasonable to assume (with Doerfer) that the flow of linguistic influence from Turkic (or Bulghar Turkic) into Mongolic was at least partly reversed during the Xianbei period, yielding the first identifiable layer of Mongolic (or Para-Mongolic) loanwords in Turkic.
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Wikipedia