Re: references Henan and Hakka

["Dylan Sung" <dylanwhs@ukgateway.net>]

:Dear Dylan,
:
:I stated that I do not agree with all the statements in the websites cited.
:For instance, I do not agree that the Min people were from Zhongyuan. I
:think the Min people were active in the Wu/Yue area on the east coast. I
:think they are the descendants of the Liangzhu culture or a derivative of
:it.
:
:The cited websites are for one purpose : to give you a definition of what
:Zhongzhou or Zhongyuan means, as you mentioned you had not heard of Hakka
:people referred to as Zhongzhou or Zhongyuan people. Zhongzhou, Zhongyuan,
:Zhongtu have the same meaning for central China mainly Henan and the
:neighboring provinces from Shaanxi(even Gansu) to Shandong today.
:Chen YunDong (Taiwan) has a book about Hakka and in one chapter he listed
:some convincing examples about the similarities of Hakka dialect and ancient
:Zhongyuan dialect. I think it is a quite convincing evidence.
:Zhongzhou/Zhongyuan includes more than Henan but Henan is a region most
:Hakka settled for some time during the migrations from the central-west, if
:you read Luo Xianglin's book and agree with his theories of Hakka origin.
:
:I can tell you what I stand:
:1. I believe a multiple origin of Hakka from various subgroups of Han. I
:think Hakka people were related to Yangshao culture.
:2. I believe the north-south migration is part of the formation of Hakka,
:but it is not the entire story.
:3. Hakka certainly has incorporated She, Han, Miao, Yao, and even Xianbei,
:Xiongnu by blood. But Hakka culture is basically Han/Tang culture.
:4. I don't think Hakka is JUST an ethnic group orginated from the south,
:otherwise they would not be called "guest" in the south.
:
:I think we are getting back to what we discussed 3-4 years ago in the same
:forum. I think you have negated all the theories/hypotheses presented. I
:would be open to hear what you believe in as for the origin of Hakka, if
:none of the theories proposed by these scholars is acceptable.
:I am listening.
:
:SL Lee


Dear Siu Leung,

Indeed, the discussion over the years have convinced me enough to say that I
agree with the first sentence in point one. Whether or not the Yangshao culture
situated midway along the HuangHe's long flood plain (7000 - 5000 years ago) as
the origin of Chinese culture, I'll leave to more enlightened scholars. There
are no intelligible written records from this age, and therefore one must take
caution from artifacts recovered through archaeology. How one derives one's
conclusions based on these artifacts is tinged with our own prejudices and
social experience. Since we have no living humun from this age, anything drawn
from ages past is speculation if there is only surface considerations.

I also agree that there is southerly migration of peoples brought about the
arrival of northern invaders.

Authors in linguistics have noted that modern the Hakka language has features
mid way between those of Min characteristics and those of Yue characteristics.
This is not surprising because of the migrations from Fujian to Guangdong.
Social interaction with the local populous would also mean an interchange of
items of vocabulary, and genes in matrimony. From what little I know, Xianbei
and Xiongnu were recruited into Chinese armies, and they may have intermarried
with the Chinese. So for point three, I also agree, as with point 4.

As pointed out previously in discussions from contributors like Dr. Lau, Luo
Xianglin's conclusions should be taken with caution. In light of evidence from
genealogies from other language groups, we know that similar migrations took
place for those people as well. Hakka as a term was a recent coining, and our
language is the only one which is, in the linguistic and social commentary,
lacking a placename. Min evokes Fujian, Beifanghua evokes the dialects of
Mandarin, Yue from Guangdong and Guangxi, Wu from the eastern coast around
Zhejiang and Jiangsu, Xiang from Hunan and Gan from around Jiangxi. The
suggestion of Jiaying seems quite reasonable for recent Hakka language.

In considering Luo's conclusions, one must review why there are common ancestors
between Hakka and Cantonese, and whether Zhongyuan as an origin of Hakka should
refer alone to Hakka to the exclusion of other dialect groups. It is this point
that one should also take when refering to the words Zhongzhou and zhongzhouren.

Unfortunately, I do not have access to Chen's book. There are many
reconstructions of Middle and Old Chinese available. WANG Li, CHOU Fakou, TUNG
T'ung-ho, LI Fangkuei, Karlgren, Pulleybank, Baxter, etc. I do not know how Chen
reconstruct the dialect of Zhongyuan. Most of the literature points to the fact
that because of the nature of Chinese script, it does not fix the sounds of
Chinese, otherwise there would only be one pronunciation and no dialects. The
earliest useful date comes from around 601 AD when the work Qieyun (H. ciet5
yun4) was finished. Here, Chinese characters are given a pronunciation using two
other characters. The first gives information about the initial consonant and
the second the rhyme and tone of the character in question. Since the characters
through the ages may have shifted its pronunciation, and also the tone class it
was once assigned, the reconstruction of a pronunciation for a character is an
arduous business. The Qieyun character dictionary survives as fragments found in
Dunhuang, where the weather and climate is agreeable for the preservation of
material prone to disintegration in more humid areas of China.

The next major dictionaries which survive come from the Song Dynasty, and based
upon the information in Qieyun. These are GuangYun 1008 AD and Jiyun 1037AD.
After that, Zhongyuan Yinyun (Rhymes of the Central Plains) appeared in 1324 AD.
His dictionary lists 6000 entries and was for the purpose of composing qu3 (H.
kiuk6) or Yuan verse, so it was for a venacular language. The influence of Jin
(Gim1 = Jurchen) and Mongol rule in this part of China lead to phonological
changes in the language of this region. It is therefore an important document of
the state of the phonology of this era. QY, GY and JI were concerned with a
standardised and therefore artificial (by the time of Song era) pronunciation of
characters.

What these dictionaries also show is the progression of the Chinese language.
The endings in Qieyun are different to those in Zhongyuan Yinyun. In the latter,
old occlusive endings found in Qieyun, Guangyun and Jiyun {as shown in Hakka
[hap6 (bring together); bat5 (eight); sak6 (stone)]} had been lost, but -m still
remained. Zhongyuan was the dictionary that showed by the time of the
Yuan/Mongol dynasty, the northern dialects of Chinese had changed considerably
to that of pre-Mongol conquest. During the Song Dynasty, when GY and JY were
written, the capital was still in Kaifeng, in the north. The Yuan capital is
situated in what is know Beijing at the time when ZYYY was written.

If one looks at the pronunciation of Chinese characters in Hakka and compare
them with readings for Middle Chinese (QY to JY) you will find reasonably good
relationships. In fact, you can do this with most Chinese dialects like
Cantonese which maintain rhyme endings with occlusive -p, -t, -k endings and -m.

For Mandarin, which has no ru-sheng/occlusive rhymes, and no -m endings, one can
say that the sounds found in ZYYY compares favourably with Mandarin. Therefore,
from that time to the modern age, -m category characters must have merged
with -n characters (as can be demonstrated when you comapred -m and -n ending
characters from Hakka with Mandarin).

The language of Zhongyuan YinYun is not similar to Hakka for the sole reason
that occlusive endings have, by the time it was written, become lost. I think
Chen's ZhongYuan dialect is the same as that found in the 1324 book. BTW, this
era is known as Early Mandarin in Chinese linguistics.

Cheers,
Dylan.