Re: references Henan and Hakka

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

Hi Siu Leung,

:You are right that QieYun was written by Lu Fayan of Sui dynasty. The book
:was found in Dunhuang which was under Xixia's territory. May be that is why
:the movie Silk Road associated that with Xixia. BTW，this movie was done
:with a lot of research.

That the book was found in Dunhuang does not mean that it was a document of the
language from that territory. As mentioned earlier, linguists believe that the
language of QieYun is taken from dialects in the NanBeiChao era from Henan and
Jiangsu. The development of prose and poetry demanded such a reference because
of the strict nature of Chinese poetry. There were Chinese officials in the far
north west. The reaches of the old Great Wall strech from around this area
eastwards. This was the outer reaches of the Early Han dynasty. The Tang era
certainly held Dunhuang, and the book may have been deposited there from this
era since poetry reached great heights during the Tang (618-906).

:I think there are some scholars are against Luo Xianglin's north-to-south
:migration theory.

Luo Xianglin has had quite an impact of Hakka studies. It superceeded the old
notion that Hakka were not even Chinese. R.A.D. Forrest's "The Chinese Language"
mentions the following on Hakka;

     'For some reason or other, much mystery has been made about the
     Hakkas[...]. This determination to treat them apart from the
     Chinese people may have started with their name, which as written
     signifies 'stranger families'.

     [...]

     There is nothing so strikingly different in physical appearance
     of the Hakkas, nor in their customs, which would set them apart
     from the other Chinese-speaking inhabitants of the south, with
     whom they seem to share just as much, or just as little, Chinese
     blood; and their language is much more in the direct line of
     derivation from old Chinese than those to which we shall
     presently come.'


:They suggest the Hakka language/dialect was original
:indigenous to Guangdong-Jiangxi and Fujian and thus should be called a
:'southern' dialect.

The terminology is unfortunate because it is a recent assignment. "Southern and
Northern dialects" when refering to Hakka, Yue, Min, should be in this day and
age to mean the situation of the language in the modern day and not 1000 plus
years ago.

:Thus, I tend to agree that Hakka tongue preserves Sui/Tang/Song tongue, and
:Putonghua(mandarin) is a late comer with Jin/Yuan. We got to be careful how
:people define Zhongzhou Yun.


That is certainly how I feel too. Mantaro Hashimoto's "The Hakka Dialect" (p.
16) mentions the following :

    'In the 1800's, there was already a short explanation in the local
    gazetteer, the Hsing-ning Hsien-chi (Volume 10 : the dialect, page
    9), concerning the local dialect, saying that Hakka dialect spoken
    in the prefecture is close to the standard pronunciation (whatever
    "standard" may have been), "although the dialect is not the same
    as the authentic pronunciation of the Central Plains." '

The quote about the Xingning Xianji doesn't allude to any particular period in
history. There are some peculiarities to Xingning Hakka, such as there not
having p and m ending rhymes ( Liu ZhenFa's "The distribution fo Hakka people
and classification of the Hakka Dialect (Languages) and its Sub-Dialects", [...
in the Xingning dialect the m/p sound is lost and mixed into ng/k.] 1997/1998 ).

My belief as mentioned in this forum a while back is that our Hakka finds close
resemblence to the entries in Wang Li's tables (HanYu YuYinShi, ISBN
7-5004-2017, p.490 to 525) of character rhymes for the Song era.

The introduction to Chapter seven of Wang Li HYYYS, p.308 which details some
information about the rhyme books and phonology of the Yuan period.

第七章 元代音系 (1279-1368)

本章講元代音系，主要是根據周德清《中原音韻》和桌從之《中州音韻》。
這兩部書的音系統完全相同。所以同時應用這兩部書的材料。

周德清的《中原音韻》書成於1324年，刊行在1333年以後，桌從之的
《中州音韻》成書年月未詳，但是1351年四川楊朝英《朝野新聲太平樂府》前面
提到“燕山卓氏《北腔韻類》”，這《北腔韻類》就是《中州樂府音韻類編》，
也就是《中州音韻》，從前有人說卓氏的《中州音韻》是根據周德清
《中原音韻》修改的，此說不可靠。

周德清《中原音韻》應該代表大都（今北京）的語言系統。周氏雖是江西高安人，
但是他在大都居住久，而且是搞戲劇的，他的《中原音韻》必然是根據大都音
的。元曲用韻與《中原音韻》完全一致，足以證明《中原音韻》是大都音。

《中州樂府音韻類編》沒有反切，並且分陰字，陽字，陰陽字三類；
《中原音韻》有反切雖未必是桌從之所作，既然它和《中原音韻》的語言系統相
符合，即可以利用它來證明元代的大都音。本章的反切例證，用的是
《中州音韻》的反切。

Cheers,
Dylan.