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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Which Chinese language/dialect in Hunan?
Message-ID: <1995Jan7.213148.26240@midway.uchicago.edu>
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Organization: University of Chicago
References: <D1yBH9.CvI@news.cis.umn.edu> <1995Jan6.062639.15107@midway.uchicago.edu> <fangshim.3.789384634@student.msu.edu>
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 1995 21:31:48 GMT
Lines: 49

	Many thanks for the additional information on Xiang 
(deleted from this reply).

In article <fangshim.3.789384634@student.msu.edu> fangshim@student.msu.edu (Shimin Fang) writes:

>I really don't know what Hao meant when he said "little linguistic interest"
>:-). To me, all dialects have the equal linguistic interest :-). But if
>the motive to study modern dialect is to understand ancient Chinese, I
>would say Old Xiang is much more interesting than New Xiang. Old Xiang
>is more ancient ( some experts think it's as primitive as Yue or Wu) than
>New Xiang, therefore remains more characteristic of ancient Chinese. 

A small correction here:  In light of the recent thread on the 
"original Chinese language," I think it's important to point out that
it doesn't really make sense to describe one language as more "ancient"
than another, when both are descended from the same parent language
and spoken synchronically.

That is to say, many scholars describe Wu and Yue as being more
"conservative" than Mandarin, and this is true insofar as they
preserve features of older Chinese, such as final stops, which 
Mandarin has lost.  However, that doesn't make them "more primitive"
than Mandarin.  There are other changes (such as the loss of distinc-
tion between retroflex and palatal initials, semantic shifts, and
lexical borrowings) that make them equally distant from Tang dynasty
Chinese. 

>For 
>instance, Old Xiang remains the complete voiced sound (b,g,d, dz), while New 
>Xiang has become voiceless as Mandarin. Old Xiang is more complicated than 
>New Xiang in many aspects.

Then it certainly sounds like Old Xiang is more conservative than
New Xiang and, therefore, more help in reconstructing older forms of
Chinese (which, as Zhouzi says, is one of the primary sources of
interest to linguists which the non-Mandarin dialects have).

>By the way, Xiang is another name for Hunan province, Gan is another
>name for Jiangxi province, and Yue is for Guangdong province.

Another note:  although the word "Cantonese" originally referred
only to the Yue dialect of Canton/Guangzhou, it has since been 
broadened to refer to all the Yue dialects (at least in non-
technical American usage).

-- 
	Daniel "Da" von Brighoff (deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /\
	5242 S. Hyde Park Blvd., Apt. 303		    /__\
	Chicago, IL  60615				   /____\
