Re: Origin of Chinese spoken languages

From: John Atkinson (johnacko_at_bigpond.com)
Date: 10/23/04 

Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 09:37:44 GMT

"LEE Sau Dan" <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote...

> "SJ" == SJ <donot@send.spam.net> writes:
>
> SJ> What are the common things between Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman,
> SJ> except that some Tibeto-Burman languages were heavily
> SJ> influenced by the Hanja scripts?
>
> Which ones? Name them, please!
>
> SJ> Please list for me what you can show here.
>
> Yeah, you should do it first. Give us a list of Tibeto-Burman
> langauges which use the Chinese script.

OK, here's a list:

The Yi (Lolo) use a syllabary with an estimated 8000 characters. It is
frequently mentioned by Chinese writers of the Ming period, and is probably
over 1000 years old. Presumably it was invented in imitation of the Chinese
script, though few of the characters look like specific Chinese ones.

The Naxi (or Moso) have two traditional writing systems. One pictographic,
looking something like the earliest Egyptian heiroglyphs or the prototypes
of the Chinese characters. Legend dates this system to the thirteenth
century. The other is a syllabary, with many of the symbols borrowed from
Chinese, others from Yi.

The Lisu have a syllabary consisting of characters that look like Chinese.
It was invented in 1925 by Wang Renbo.

Waiting to see what SJ makes of these.

John.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: SI units (was: Expressing fractions)
    ... >> of a foreign script here and there, ... So do fonts for the big5 encoding (for traditional Chinese ... matrix of Chinese characters. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Academic/scientific journals in Esperanto?
    ... But when two languages share a script, ... You're again demonstrating your ignorance about Chinese. ... simple google "Mandarin Romanization" gives lots of relevant pages. ... Manuel> names and Chinese words in its written communications. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Origin of Chinese spoken languages
    ... > The Yi script is a separate script. ... > John> It is frequently mentioned by Chinese writers of the Ming ... > John> of the characters look like specific Chinese ones. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Origin of Chinese spoken languages - 2nd evidence
    ... >languages are actually written languages, because they were evolved from an ... The map of the early Chinese centers of civilization already ... become more established in China and more sites are discovered the ... immediately recognized them as an early form of the Chinese script. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Yanomamo Language
    ... There was something in New Scientist a few weeks ago about a language ... (mainly reserved for religious purposes nowadays) ... Chinese (i.e. it is not one of those Chinese languages that are ... The pictographic script is mainly ...
    (sci.lang)