Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The Chinese language as used in the Tang dynasty (618–907), whose pronunciation is known from systematic descriptions in dictionaries and scholarly works from the Tang, Song, and later dynasties, and from the comparison of modern varieties of Chinese. Middle Chinese is the source of loanwords in Korean and Vietnamese and the largest group of Chinese loanwords in Japanese.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- proper noun Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (6th century - 10th century)
Etymologies
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Examples
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Prefix deletion is a common change in Middle Chinese which is half the reason why modern Chinese seems so completely removed from its original pronunciation.
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Prefix deletion is a common change in Middle Chinese which is half the reason why modern Chinese seems so completely removed from its original pronunciation.
Archive 2007-12-01 2007
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Min is the only branch of Chinese that cannot be directly derived from Middle Chinese.
Two by Adams Michael Turton 2009
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There needs no 'lack' in a language to motivate borrowing, as is evident by the fact that Japanese continues to use numerals originally borrowed from Middle Chinese (ichi, ni, san) side-by-side with its older, native set (hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu).
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If we take our cues from Middle Chinese however, we might expect that the offending onset element was simply deleted.
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It is afterall to be expected for voiceless codas to produce such tones as we see in, say, Middle Chinese and other budding tonal languages.
Winter's Law in Balto-Slavic, "Hybrid Theory" and phonation - Part 1 2008
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If we take our cues from Middle Chinese however, we might expect that the offending onset element was simply deleted.
Archive 2008-03-01 2008
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It is afterall to be expected for voiceless codas to produce such tones as we see in, say, Middle Chinese and other budding tonal languages.
Archive 2008-01-01 2008
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In the first word, the prefix *b- has been omitted in Middle Chinese while *p- in the second word is not a prefix and therefore remains intact.
Archive 2007-12-01 2007
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In the first word, the prefix *b- has been omitted in Middle Chinese while *p- in the second word is not a prefix and therefore remains intact.
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