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105-474: Gaochang ( Chinese : 高 昌 ; pinyin : Gāochāng ; Old Uyghur : Qocho ), also called Khocho , Karakhoja , Qara-hoja , Kara-Khoja or Karahoja (قاراغوجا in Uyghur ), was a ruined ancient oasis city on the northern rim of the inhospitable Taklamakan Desert in present-day Sanbu Township, Xinjiang , China. The site is also known in published reports as Chotscho , Khocho , Qocho or Qočo . During

210-547: A family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with

315-464: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where

420-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and

525-505: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and

630-595: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese

735-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of

840-597: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of

945-700: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only

1050-734: A man named Ashina led 500 families from Gansu to Gaochang. In 460, the Rouran forced them to move to the Altai. They became the Ashina clan that formed the Göktürk Khaganate Six Dynasties Turfan tombs contained dumplings . From the mid-5th century until the mid-7th century, the Gaochang Kingdom was successively controlled by the Kan, Zhang, Ma and Qu clans. At the time of its conquest by

1155-564: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as

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1260-520: A red complexion, and his face was wide. However, a complete genetic analysis of Muqan Qaghan's daughter Empress Ashina (551–582) in 2023 by Xiaoming Yang et al. found nearly exclusively Ancient Northeast Asian ancestry (97,7%) next to minor West-Eurasian components (2,3%), and no Chinese ("Yellow River") admixture. According to Chinese historian Xue Zongzheng , the original Ashina tribe members had physical features that were quite different from those of East Asian people. However, over time, members of

1365-505: A result of repeated marriages. She also wrote that members of the Ashina tribe sought to marry Chinese nobles, "perhaps in the hope of finding an occasion to claim rulership over China, or because the high birth of the mother warranted seniority". Esin notes that the later depiction of an Ashina prince, the Bust of Kul Tigin , has an East Asian appearance. According to Canadian scholar Joo-Yup Lee, it

1470-538: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate

1575-503: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin

1680-610: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c.  1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct

1785-563: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than

1890-596: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which

1995-565: Is because they are descendants of the wolf, and naming so is for not forgetting their ancestors." According to Klyashtorny, the origin myth of Ashina shared similarities with the Wusun , although there is a significant difference that, whereas in the Wusun myth the wolf saves the ancestor of the tribe, it is not as in the case of the Turks. He also adds that Turk system of beliefs linking at least some sections of

2100-485: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,

2205-651: Is found in the official Chinese histories." Lee & Kuang state that the most likely explanation for the West Eurasian physiognomy of the Yenisei Kirghiz is a high frequency of the Eurasian Indo-European haplogroup R1a-Z93 . Muqan Qaghan , the third Qaghan of the First Turkic Khaganate , was described by Chinese authors as having an unusual appearance. He had eyes like "colored glazes", he had

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2310-595: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of

2415-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate

2520-598: Is possible that the Ashina tribe belonged to the paternal haplogroup R1a1 . The reasoning for this assumption is that the Ashina tribe was said to be closely related to the Yenisei Kirghiz people, and also to the Iranian Saka . The modern-day descendants of the Yenisei Kirghiz, the Kyrgyz people , have one of the highest frequencies of haplogroup R1a-Z93. This lineage believed to be associated with Indo-Iranians who migrated to

2625-745: Is similar to the Sogdian form Ašinas from the Bugut and Karabalgasun steles and the Arabic forms Ašinās and Ašnās from medieval Islamic sources. Chinese editors usually avoided the coda /-s/. Takashi Ōsawa hypothtically derives the family name Ašїnas from their tribal ancestress's name * A-ši-na and the final element -as , which he explains as a plural suffix (similar to the Turkic Käŋäräs < Käŋär "( Kangar / Kangly )" + suffix -(ä)s) as proposed by Marquart, Melioranskii and others. He further links * A-ši-na to

2730-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles

2835-484: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,

2940-496: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because

3045-497: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for

3150-540: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it

3255-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while

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3360-735: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system

3465-843: The An Lushan Rebellion and in 755, the Chinese were forced to pull back their soldiers from the region. The area was first taken by the Tibetans, then finally by the Uyghurs in 803, who called the area Kocho (Qocho). After 840 Gaochang became occupied by remnants of the Uyghur Khaganate fleeing Yenisei Kirghiz invasion of their land. The Uyghurs established the Kingdom of Qocho (Kara-Khoja) in 850. The inhabitants of Qocho practiced Buddhism , Manichaeism and Christianity . The Uyghurs converted to Buddhism and sponsored building of temple caves in

3570-617: The Astana tombs . One of the earliest cultures of the region was the Iron Age Subeshi culture (1100-100 BCE). The Subeshi culture contributes some of the later period Tarim Mummies . The culture is probably associated with the Cheshi state (車師, Chü-shih, Jushi Kingdom ) known from Chinese historical sources. The Subeshi culture is documented by three closely related cemeteries the Subeshi cemetery ,

3675-610: The Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in

3780-504: The Eastern Turks . This idea is seconded by Hungarian researcher András Róna-Tas , who finds it plausible "that we are dealing with a royal family and clan of Saka origin". Findley also said that the term böri , used to identify the ruler's retinue as 'wolves', probably also derived from one of the Iranian languages . H. W. Haussig and S. G. Kljyashtorny suggest an association between

3885-559: The Gaoche ( 高 車 ) was rising to challenge power of the Rouran in the Tarim Basin . The Gaoche king Afuzhiluo ( 阿 伏 至 羅 ) killed King Kan Shougui, who was the nephew of Kan Bozhou. and appointed a Han from Dunhuang , named Zhang Mengming (張孟明), as his own vassal King of Gaochang. Gaochang thus passed under Gaoche rule. Later, Zhang Mengming was killed in an uprising by the people of Gaochang and replaced by Ma Ru ( 馬 儒 ). In 501, Ma Ru himself

3990-608: The Göktürk Orkhon inscriptions , in which the Göktürks are described as the "Blue Turks"; being descended from the marriage between Blue Sky and the Brown Earth. According to Kuastornyj, the perfect translation of "Ashina" as an Indo-European word meaning "blue" indicates that the Türks of the First Turkic Khaganate period were aware of the non-Türkic origin of the name "Ashina", and of

4095-693: The Han dynasty . In 327, the Gaochang Commandery ( jùn ) was created by the Former Liang under the Han Chinese ruler Zhang Jun . The Chinese set up a military colony/garrison and organized the land into multiple divisions. Han Chinese colonists from the Hexi region and the central plains also settled in the region. After the fall of the Western Jin dynasty , Northern China split into multiple states, including

4200-525: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in

4305-680: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with

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4410-579: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and

4515-592: The Saka languages of central Asia and means "blue" (which translates to Proto-Turkic * kȫk , whence Old Turkic 𐰚𐰇𐰚 kök , and same in all Modern Turkic languages). The color blue is identified with the east , so that Göktürk, another name for the Turkic empire, meant the "Turks of the East"; meanwhile, Peter Benjamin Golden favours a more limited denotation of Göktürks as denoting only

4620-833: The Shengjindian cemetery , and the Yanghai cemetery . The region around Turfan was described during the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) as being occupied by the Jūshī ( Jushi Kingdom ), while control over the region swayed between the Han Chinese and the Xiongnu . Gaochang was built in the 1st century BC, it was an important site along the Silk Road . It played a key role as a transportation hub in Western China . The Jushi leaders later pledged their allegiance to

4725-586: The Silk Road . It was destroyed in wars during the 14th century and old palace ruins and inside and outside cities can still be seen today. Along with other sites along the historic Silk Road , Gaocheng was inscribed in 2014 on the UNESCO World Heritage List as the Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor World Heritage Site. Near Gaochang is another major archeological site:

4830-425: The Sui dynasty , but his attempt at sinicization provoked a coup which overthrew the Qu ruler. The Qu family was restored six years later and the successor Qu Wentai welcomed the Tang pilgrim Xuanzang with great enthusiasm in 629 AD. The Kingdom of Gaochang was made out of Han Chinese migrants and ruled by the Han Chinese Qu family which originated from Gansu. Jincheng commandery 金城 (Lanzhou), district of Yuzhong 榆中

4935-558: The Tiele confederation , who were likewise associated with the Xiongnu. Like the Göktürks , the Tiele were probably one of many nomadic Turkic peoples on the steppe. However, Lee & Kuang (2017) state that Chinese histories did not describe the Ashina-led Göktürks as descending from the Dingling or belonging to the Tiele confederation . Several researchers, including Peter B. Golden , H. W. Haussig, S. G. Klyashtorny, Carter V. Findley , D. G. Savinov, B. A. Muratov, S. P. Guschin, and András Róna-Tas have posited that

5040-402: The Western Turks and rebelled against Tang suzerainty . Emperor Taizong sent an army led by General Hou Junji against the kingdom in 640 and Qu Wentai apparently died of shock at news of the approaching army. Gaochang was annexed by the Chinese Tang dynasty and turned into a sub-prefecture of Xizhou (西州) and the seat of government of Anxi (安西). Before the Chinese conquered Gaochang, it

5145-529: The Xiongnu title 閼氏, which was pronounced * ′ât-zie in Late Middle Chinese , meant "wife of a ruler", and might be derived from * aš / eš , * azhi / * ezhi < * ašïn / * ešin , and * azhïn / * ezhin , further from Tungusic * Aši < * asun / * asi < * hasun < * khasu < * kasun < * katsun and Turko - Mongolic * Ači < ačun < * hatun < khatun < katun . Chinese chroniclers recorded four origin tales, which Golden termed "Wolf Tale I", "Wolf Tale II", "Shemo (Žama) and

5250-446: The Yuan dynasty and Ming dynasty , Gaochang was referred to as "Halahezhuo" ( 哈 拉 和 卓 ) (Qara-khoja) and Huozhou. Artistic depictions of the city have been published by Albert von Le Coq . Gaochang is considered in some sources to have been a "Chinese colony", that is, it was located in a region otherwise occupied at the time by West Eurasian peoples. A busy trading center, it was a stopping point for merchant traders traveling on

5355-423: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c.  1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded

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5460-542: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at

5565-441: The suzerainty of his kingdom, and went personally to Genghis Khan with a sizeable tribute when demanded in 1211. The Uyghurs thus went into the service of the Mongols, who later formed the Yuan dynasty in the territories of what is now China. The Uyghurs became bureaucrats ( semu ) of the Mongol Empire and their Uyghur script was modified for Mongolian. As far south as Quanzhou , preponderance of Gaochang Uyghur in Church of

5670-676: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Ashina tribe Primary Chinese sources ascribed different origins to

5775-448: The Altai region in the Bronze Age, and is carried by various Türkic groups. American historian Peter Golden has reported that Y-DNA genetic testing of the proposed descendants of the Ashina tribe does seem to confirm a link to the Indo-Iranians , emphasizing that "the Turks as a whole ‘were made up of heterogeneous and somatically dissimilar populations". The first genetic analysis on an early royal Ashina member ( Empress Ashina ,

5880-408: The Ashina clan was a component of the Xiongnu confederation. but this is contested. Göktürks were also posited as having originated from an obscure Suo state (索國), north of the Xiongnu. According to the Book of Sui and the Tongdian , they were "mixed barbarians" ( 雜胡 ; záhú ) from Pingliang . According to some researchers (Duan, Xue, Tang, and Lung) the Ashina tribe was descended from

5985-415: The Ashina clan was related to the "Yenisei Kyrgyz", who resided near the Pamir mountains and are described as possessing red hair and blue eyes in the New Book of Tang (Xin Tangshu 217b.6147), a description previously used to describe the Wusun. However according to Lee & Kuang (2017), the Göktürks differed from the Qirghiz in their physiognomy and "no comparable depiction of the Kök Türks or Tiele

6090-418: The Ashina tribe intermarried with Chinese nobility, which shifted their physical appearance to a more East Asian one. According to Xue, having a physical appearance like a Sogdian was by the time of Qilibi Khan (Ashina Simo), an eighth generation descendant of Bumin Qaghan (founder of the First Turkic Khaganate), presented as a sign of mixed ancestry among the Ashina. This suggests that the transformation of

6195-427: The Ashina tribe. Ashina were first attested to 439, as reported by the Book of Sui : on the 18th day of the 10th month, the Tuoba ruler Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei overthrew Juqu Mujian of the Northern Liang in eastern Gansu , and 500 Ashina families fled northwest to the Rouran Khaganate near Gaochang . According to the Book of Zhou , History of the Northern Dynasties , and New Book of Tang ,

6300-409: The Ashina, upon becoming the head of Göktürks , exhibited a tuğ banner with a wolf head over their gate in reminiscence of its origins, the name "Ashina" is translated by some researchers as "wolf", cf. Tuoba 叱奴 * čino , Middle Mongol činua , Khalkha čono . However, Golden contends that derivation from Mongolic is mistaken. On the Khor-Asgat inscription, the form Ašїnas is written and

6405-447: The Central Asian oases. Gaochang was ruled by the Former Liang , Former Qin and Northern Liang as part of a commandery. In 383 the general Lu Guang of the Former Qin seized control of the region. In 439, remnants of the Northern Liang , led by Juqu Wuhui and Juqu Anzhou , fled to Gaochang where they would hold onto power until 460 when they were conquered by the Rouran Khaganate . Another version of this story says that in 439

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6510-420: The Deer Tale" and "Historical Account", of the Turks in dynasty histories and historical compilations "based on or copied from the same source(s) and repeated in later collections of historical tales". These stories were sometimes pieced together to form a chronologically coherent narrative of early Ashina history. However, as the Book of Zhou , the Book of Sui , and the Youyang Zazu were all written around

6615-529: The East inscriptions of the Yuan period attests to their importance in the Christian community there. The Gaochang area was conquered by the Mongols of the Chagatai Khanate (not part of the Yuan dynasty ) from 1275 to 1318 by as many as 120,000 troops. Buddhism spread to China from India along the northern branch of the Silk Road predominantly in the 4th and 5th centuries as the Liang rulers were Buddhists. The building of Buddhist grottos probably began during this period. There are clusters close to Gaochang,

6720-490: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though

6825-607: The North-East Asian mtDNA haplogroup F1d . The Ashina individual was found to be genetically closer to East Asians than Turkic groups and was genetically closest to post-Iron Age Tungusic and Mongolic Steppe pastoralists, supporting the near-exclusively Northeast Asian origin of the Ashina tribe. The ancient Türkic royal family of the Göktürk Khaganate was found to share genetic affinities to post-Iron Age Tungusic and Mongolic pastoralists, while having heterogeneous relationships towards various later Turkic-speaking groups, suggesting genetic heterogeneity and multiple sources of origin for

6930-420: The Rouran Khaganate, there were more than ten thousand Han Chinese households in Gaochang. The Rouran Khaganate, which was based in Mongolia, appointed a Han Chinese named Kan Bozhou to rule as King of Gaochang in 460, and it became a separate vassal kingdom of the Khaganate. Kan was dependent on Rouran backing. Yicheng and Shougui were the last two kings of the Chinese Kan family to rule Gaochang. At this time

7035-565: The Turk ruling class to the Sogdians and, beyond them, to the Wusun . The Chronicle of Northern Zhou describes the funeral rites of the Ashina. The deceased were laid to rest in a tent, and animals would be sacrificed around the tent. Relatives of the deceased would ride horses around the tent and ritualistically cut themselves about the face as a display of mourning, or "blood tears". The individual and their belongings would then be incinerated. According to D. G. Savinov, no burials in South Siberia nor Central Asia that are fully consistent with

7140-495: The daughter of Mugan Khagan , second son of Bumin Khagan , the founder of the Göktürk Khaganate ) in 2023 by Xiaoming Yang et al. found nearly exclusively Northeast Asian ancestry (97.7%) next to a minor West-Eurasian component (2.3%). The West-Eurasian component corresponded to a single admixture event (possibly Afanasievo -related) dating to around 1566 ± 396 years before Ashina's lifetime (ie dating to c.  1000 BC ). The authors determined that Empress Ashina belonged to

7245-405: The description of Ashina burials have been found. According to D. G. Savinov this may be for several reasons: It is thought that the rite of cremation which was adopted by the ruling elite did not spread among the common people of the Qaganate. This may be attributed to the different ethnic origin of the ruling family. According to the Book of Zhou and History of the Northern Dynasties ,

7350-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which

7455-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of

7560-551: The dual ethnic origin of the early Türks. In the view of Louis Bazin , this knowledge was being suppressed in the Second Turkic Khaganate period by the Türkic nationalist policies of Bilge Qaghan . The name "Ashina" was recorded in ancient Muslim chronicles in these forms: Aś(i)nas ( al-Tabari ), Ānsa ( Hudud al-'Alam ), Śaba ( Ibn Khordadbeh ), Śana , Śaya ( Al-Masudi ). Based on Chinese sources' testament that

7665-566: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by

7770-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable

7875-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has

7980-599: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although

8085-672: The kingdom, they included the Zhang, Fan, Yin, Ma, Shi and Xin families. Later, when the Göktürks emerged as the supreme power in the region, the Qu dynasty of Gaochang became vassals of the Göktürks. While the material civilization of Kucha to its west in this period remained chiefly Indo-Iranian in character, in Gaochang it gradually merged into the Tang aesthetics. In 607 the ruler of Gaochang Qu Boya paid tribute to

8190-581: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into

8295-518: The largest being the Bezeklik grottos . Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of

8400-516: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses

8505-464: The later populations of the Turkic empire. This shows that the Ashina lineage had a dominating contribution on Mongolic and Tungusic speakers but limited contribution on Turkic-speaking populations. According to the authors, these findings "once again validates a cultural diffusion model over a demic diffusion model for the spread of Turkic languages" and refutes "the western Eurasian origin and multiple origin hypotheses" in favor of an East Asian origin for

8610-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including

8715-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with

8820-635: The name and the compound "kindred of Ashin" ahşaẽna (in Old Persian ). This is so even in East Turkestan ; then the desired form would be in the Sogdian ' xs' yn' k (-әhšēnē) "blue, dark"; Khotan-Saka (Brahmi) āşşeiņa (-āşşena) "blue", where a long -ā- emerged as development ahş-> āşş-; in Tocharian A āśna- "blue, dark" (from Khotan-Saka and Sogdian). There is textual support for either of these versions in

8925-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in

9030-513: The nearby Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves where depictions of Uyghur sponsors may be seen. The Buddhist Uyghur kings, who called themselves idiquts, retained their nomadic lifestyle, residing in Qocho during the winter, but moved to the cooler Bishbalik near Urumchi in the summer. Qocho later became a vassal state of the Kara-Khitans . However, In 1209, the idiqut Barchuq offered Genghis Khan

9135-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of

9240-503: The physical appearance of the Ashina tribe was almost complete by the mid-7th century AD. Both Shibi (609-619 AD) Khagan and Chuluo (604-612 AD) Khagan were doubtful of Qilibi Khan being Ashina because he resembled a Sogdian more than a Tujue(Turk) and prevented him from being a shad . Turkish historian Emel Esin noted that "the members of the Kök-Türk dynasty, and particularly Köl Tigin , had frankly Mongoloid features", probably as

9345-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,

9450-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for

9555-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without

9660-525: The same time, during the early Tang dynasty , it is debatable whether they could truly be considered chronological or rather should be considered competing versions of the Ashina's origin. The record of Turks in Zhoushu (written in the first half of the seventh century) describes the use of gold by Turks around the mid-fifth century: "(The Turks) put gold sculpture of wolf head on their tuğ banner ; their military men were called Fuli , that is, wolf in Chinese. It

9765-505: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by

9870-557: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language

9975-421: The term Ashina ultimately descends from an Indo-European source, possibly Tocharian or from one of the many Eastern Iranian tribal groups, such as the Saka and Wusun . Jonathan Ratcliffe supports this theory citing numerous academics that the Ashina ethnic core could have been Indo-Iranian culturally, speaking Sogdian or variant of Tocharian. Carter V. Findley assumes that the name "Ashina" comes from one of

10080-609: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to

10185-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in

10290-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese

10395-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until

10500-508: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with

10605-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,

10710-636: Was an impediment to Chinese access to Tarim and Transoxiania. Gaochang was populated by Han people and Shanxi (Hedong) was the original home of the royal family at the time of the Tang dynasty's annexation. The Tang dynasty accepted arguments at court who said that because Gaochang was Han populated that they needed to annex it. Under Tang rule, Gaochang was inhabited by Chinese, Sogdians and Tocharians . 7th or 8th century old dumplings and wontons were found in Turfan . The Tang dynasty became greatly weakened due to

10815-481: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half

10920-725: Was overthrown and killed, and the people of Gaochang appointed Qu Jia ( 麴 嘉 ) of Jincheng (in Gansu ) as their king, forming the Qushi Kingdom (麹氏王国, 501-640 CE). Qu Jia hailed from the Zhong district of Jincheng commandery (金城, roughly corresponding to modern day Lanzhou , Gansu ) Qu Jia at first pledged allegiance to the Rouran, but the Rouran khaghan was soon killed by the Gaoche and he had to submit to Gaoche overlordship. During Qu rule, powerful families established marriage ties with each other and dominated

11025-536: Was the home of the Qu Jia. The Qu family was linked by marriage alliances to the Turks, with a Turk being the grandmother of King Qu Boya's. During this period, Gaochang's administration, language, city planning, and Confucian society was so heavily dominated by Chinese models that it was known in Sogdian as "Chinatown", a usage which continued as late as the tenth-century Persian geography Ḥudūd al-‘Ālam . However, fearing Tang expansion, Qu Wentai later formed an alliance with

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