What dialect was the pronunciation of poetry in the Tang Dynasty?

First of all, the language with the same pronunciation as the medieval Chinese in the Tang Dynasty should no longer exist. Large-scale migration caused by politics or war has changed the pronunciation of various languages, but we can find out some languages that can better preserve the pronunciation of Tang and Song Dynasties.

During the Tang and Song Dynasties, there were several large-scale immigration waves, especially after the capital was moved to the Southern Song Dynasty, the number of Han people in Wenzhou increased greatly. The orthodox Han culture brought by Han people from the Central Plains to Ouyue assimilated the local Chinese dialects, and the Central Plains dialect left the characteristics of different readings in Wenzhou dialect.

Wenzhou dialect was very close to modern Chinese in Song Dynasty. After several changes in northern Chinese, Wenzhou dialect still maintains many ancient features of Chinese, so it is more fluent to read Tang poetry and Song ci in Wenzhou dialect than in Mandarin.

Extended materials:

The pronunciation of Middle Ancient Chinese

Because there was no recording equipment in the Middle Ages, and Chinese characters were not alphabetic, the pronunciation could not be strictly recorded. The pronunciation of Middle Ancient Chinese can only be determined by analyzing and studying the above materials.

Since Gao Benhan first applied the research methods of western linguistics to Middle Ancient Chinese, many linguists at home and abroad have proposed the construction of the pronunciation of Middle Ancient Chinese.

Due to the limitations of the material itself and the different understanding of the material, there are some differences in onomatopoeia among different schools, but the academic views are basically the same on many important features.

Many features of modern Chinese have been laid in Middle Chinese, for example, a morpheme is a syllable, and there is no consonant cluster that may exist in ancient Chinese, and there is a tone that can distinguish meaning, and so on.

Therefore, a syllable can be analyzed into initials, finals and tones. The initial is the initial consonant, and the vowel must contain a vowel (the main vowel). The vowel can also be preceded by a vowel (the intermediate sound) and followed by a vowel or consonant.

Initial consonants

It is said that at the end of the Tang Dynasty, Saman kept warm and created 3 letters to represent the initial consonants of Middle Chinese, which were later derived into 36 letters. The initial consonant of Qieyun system is obtained by linking and reverse cutting the words, which is basically consistent with the thirty letters.

in the late Qing dynasty, Chen Li wrote a textual research on Qieyun, introducing a new method to analyze the system of Qieyun.

At that time, the book "Make Up for Errors and Make Up for Shortcomings" had not been seen in the world, so he had to study it with "Guang Yun".

He used the method of association to analyze the reverse-cutting words, and found that the 36 letters on the rhyme actually ignored the opposition of some sound categories in Qieyun —— the orthognathic sounds "Zhao, Chuan, Chuang and Shen" were divided into two categories. Then, according to the materials of Van Gogh-Han antithesis and dialect, we can test the pronunciation of initials in the era of Qieyun.

vowels

The most basic material for the study of vowels in ancient Chinese is Qieyun, followed by the rhyme chart, because it is difficult to know whether Qieyun reflects the actual pronunciation and whether it reflects the pronunciation of one place at a time.

There are differences on the understanding of the basic issues, such as to what extent the equivalence of rhymes and graphs reflects the differences between the main vowels and the intermediate vowels. Scholars have different views on the onomatopoeia of Middle Chinese, and sometimes there are subtle differences in the classification of vowels.

It is generally believed that there is a U-like intermediate sound in the closing words in rhymes. Moreover, because the reverse tangent of the third-class word in Qieyun has its own set, which is different from others, it is generally believed that the third-class word has an intermediate sound similar to I.

Some scholars (such as Gao Benhan and Wang Li) think that the fourth-class word also has an intermediate sound, while others (such as Pan Wuyun and Zheng Zhangshangfang) think that the second-class word also has an intermediate sound.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Middle Ancient Chinese