Re: Origin of Chinese spoken languages

From: Geoff (grw888_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/22/04 

Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 02:32:01 GMT

SJ wrote:
> I repeat again:
>
> What are the common things between Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman, except that
> some Tibeto-Burman languages were heavily influenced by the Hanja scripts?
> Please list for me what you can show here.
>
> But, even Chinese archaeologists and historians agree that the Shang
> people were East-I, not Hua, the assumed ancestors of the majority of
> Chinese (Han). East-I were closer to Atlatic-speaking people including
> Korean, Japanese, and Manchurian. Thus, it is too obvious that Shang
> people spoke in ancient Altatic, not Chinese.
>
> SJ.

Well, let's take a shot at it.

In Tibetan there are several classes of syllables, represented in the Tibetan letters by the absence or presence of subjoined letters in the written recpord of these spoken words. For example: ba, bra, bya, bla. These correspond very closely to the classes of syllables in Old Chinese. FOr example: Ba (Type I), Bra (Type II), Bya (Type IIIA), and bla (Type IIIB). Old Chinese begins to resemble the language written down in Classical Tibetan spelling quite closely if you take the time to follow the trail back from the modern dialects, through the Qieyun or Guangyun matrices. Karlgren (suitably adjusted for later info) or Baxter's reconstruction -- along with most other reputable stabs at OC -- will show you to a very close relationship with Tibetan. Since you are an expert, I don't need to go into a lot of detail on these matters. I also await your view of how to fit the Type IV rhymes into the model.