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96-582: Until the late 19th century, most formal writing in Korea, including government documents, scholarship and much literature, was written in Classical Chinese . Before the 15th century, the little writing in Korean was done using cumbersome adaptations of Chinese characters such as idu and hyangchal . Thus Early Middle Korean, like Old Korean before it, is sparsely documented. This situation changed dramatically with

192-496: A pro-drop language : its syntax often allows either subjects or objects to be dropped when their reference is understood. Additionally, words are generally not restricted to use as certain parts of speech : many characters may function as either a noun, verb, or adjective. There is no general copula in Classical Chinese akin to how 是 ( shì ) is used in modern Standard Chinese. Characters that can sometimes function as

288-528: A spectrogram . The vocal tract acts as a resonant cavity , and the position of the jaw, lips, and tongue affect the parameters of the resonant cavity, resulting in different formant values. The acoustics of vowels can be visualized using spectrograms, which display the acoustic energy at each frequency, and how this changes with time. The first formant, abbreviated "F1", corresponds to vowel openness (vowel height). Open vowels have high F1 frequencies, while close vowels have low F1 frequencies, as can be seen in

384-418: A system of honorifics . Many final and interrogative particles are found in Classical Chinese. Beyond differences in grammar and vocabulary, Classical Chinese can be distinguished by its literary qualities: an effort to maintain parallelism and rhythm is typical, even in prose works. Works also make extensive use of literary techniques such as allusion, which contributes to the language's brevity. Prior to

480-462: A Chinese text. This system became so entrenched that 15th-century efforts to reform it to more closely match the Chinese pronunciation of the time were abandoned. The prestige of Chinese was further enhanced by the adoption of Confucianism as the state ideology of Joseon , and Chinese literary forms flooded into the language at all levels of society. Some of these denoted items of imported culture, but it

576-428: A back vowel, the more intense is the rounding. However, in some languages, roundedness is independent from backness, such as French and German (with front rounded vowels), most Uralic languages ( Estonian has a rounding contrast for /o/ and front vowels), Turkic languages (with a rounding distinction for front vowels and /u/ ), and Vietnamese with back unrounded vowels. Nonetheless, even in those languages there

672-429: A copula in specific circumstances include 為 ( wéi ; 'make', 'do') when indicating temporary circumstances, and 曰 ( yuē ; 'say') when used in the sense of 'to be called'. Classical Chinese has more pronouns compared to the modern vernacular. In particular, whereas modern Standard Chinese has one character generally used as a first-person pronoun, Classical Chinese has several—many of which are used as part of

768-404: A direct mapping of tongue position." Nonetheless, the concept that vowel qualities are determined primarily by tongue position and lip rounding continues to be used in pedagogy, as it provides an intuitive explanation of how vowels are distinguished. Theoretically, vowel height refers to the vertical position of either the tongue or the jaw (depending on the model) relative to either the roof of

864-662: A language's writing system , particularly if the language uses an alphabet . In writing systems based on the Latin alphabet , the letters ⟨a⟩ , ⟨e⟩ , ⟨i⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨u⟩ , ⟨y⟩ , ⟨w⟩ and sometimes others can all be used to represent vowels. However, not all of these letters represent the vowels in all languages that use this writing, or even consistently within one language. Some of them, especially ⟨w⟩ and ⟨y⟩ , are also used to represent approximant consonants . Moreover,

960-417: A lesser extent [ɨ, ɘ, ɜ, æ] , etc.), can be secondarily qualified as close or open, as in the traditional conception, but this refers to jaw rather than tongue position. In addition, rather than there being a unitary category of back vowels, the regrouping posits raised vowels , where the body of the tongue approaches the velum ( [u, o, ɨ ], etc.), and retracted vowels , where the root of the tongue approaches

1056-477: A narrower constriction of the vocal tract than vowels, and so may be considered consonants on that basis. Nonetheless, the phonetic and phonemic definitions would still conflict for the syllabic /l/ in table or the syllabic nasals in button and rhythm . The traditional view of vowel production, reflected for example in the terminology and presentation of the International Phonetic Alphabet ,

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1152-421: A result of differences in prosody . The most important prosodic variables are pitch ( fundamental frequency ), loudness ( intensity ) and length ( duration ). However, the features of prosody are usually considered to apply not to the vowel itself, but to the syllable in which the vowel occurs. In other words, the domain of prosody is the syllable, not the segment (vowel or consonant). We can list briefly

1248-475: A result, over half the modern Korean lexicon consists of Sino-Korean words, though they account for only about a tenth of basic vocabulary. Classical Chinese was the language of government and scholarship in Korea from the 7th century until the Gabo Reforms of the 1890s. After King Gwangjong established the gwageo civil service examinations on the Chinese model in 958, familiarity with written Chinese and

1344-461: A simple plot of F1 against F2. In fact, this kind of plot of F1 against F2 has been used by analysts to show the quality of the vowels in a wide range of languages, including RP, the Queen's English, American English, Singapore English, Brunei English, North Frisian, Turkish Kabardian, and various indigenous Australian languages. R-colored vowels are characterized by lowered F3 values. Rounding

1440-403: A single phenomenon and posit instead three independent features of rounded (endolabial), compressed (exolabial), and unrounded. The lip position of unrounded vowels may also be classified separately as spread and neutral (neither rounded nor spread). Others distinguish compressed rounded vowels, in which the corners of the mouth are drawn together, from compressed unrounded vowels, in which

1536-475: A sound produced with no constriction in the vocal tract) does not always match the phonological definition (i.e. a sound that forms the peak of a syllable). The approximants [j] and [w] illustrate this: both are without much of a constriction in the vocal tract (so phonetically they seem to be vowel-like), but they occur at the onset of syllables (e.g. in "yet" and "wet") which suggests that phonologically they are consonants. A similar debate arises over whether

1632-528: A stilted style influenced by Classical Chinese. The best examples of colloquial Korean are the translations in foreign-language textbooks produced by the Joseon Bureau of Interpreters . Hangul letters correspond closely to the phonemes of Late Middle Korean. The romanization most commonly used in linguistic writing on the history of Korean is the Yale romanization devised by Samuel Martin , which faithfully reflects

1728-440: A two-syllable pronunciation of the word flower ( /ˈflaʊər/ ) phonetically form a disyllabic triphthong but are phonologically a sequence of a diphthong (represented by the letters ⟨ow⟩ ) and a monophthong (represented by the letters ⟨er⟩ ). Some linguists use the terms diphthong and triphthong only in this phonemic sense. The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols that represent vowel sounds in

1824-668: A vowel might be represented by a letter usually reserved for consonants, or a combination of letters, particularly where one letter represents several sounds at once, or vice versa; examples from English include ⟨igh⟩ in "thigh" and ⟨x⟩ in "x-ray". In addition, extensions of the Latin alphabet have such independent vowel letters as ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨ö⟩ , ⟨ü⟩ , ⟨å⟩ , ⟨æ⟩ , and ⟨ø⟩ . The phonetic values vary considerably by language, and some languages use ⟨i⟩ and ⟨y⟩ for

1920-433: A word like bird in a rhotic dialect has an r-colored vowel /ɝ/ or a syllabic consonant /ɹ̩/ . The American linguist Kenneth Pike (1943) suggested the terms " vocoid " for a phonetic vowel and "vowel" for a phonological vowel, so using this terminology, [j] and [w] are classified as vocoids but not vowels. However, Maddieson and Emmory (1985) demonstrated from a range of languages that semivowels are produced with

2016-427: Is an exolabial (compressed) back vowel, and sounds quite different from an English endolabial /u/ . Swedish and Norwegian are the only two known languages in which the feature is contrastive; they have both exo- and endo-labial close front vowels and close central vowels , respectively. In many phonetic treatments, both are considered types of rounding, but some phoneticians do not believe that these are subsets of

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2112-423: Is believed to have arisen from a contraction of a pair of syllables with low and high tone. LMK texts do not show clear distinctions after the first high or rising tone in a word, suggesting that the language had a pitch accent rather than a full tone system. Although some Chinese words had previously entered Korean, Middle Korean was the period of the massive and systematic influx of Sino-Korean vocabulary . As

2208-482: Is disputed to have phonemic voiceless vowels but no language is confirmed to have them phonemically. Modal voice , creaky voice , and breathy voice (murmured vowels) are phonation types that are used contrastively in some languages. Often, they co-occur with tone or stress distinctions; in the Mon language , vowels pronounced in the high tone are also produced with creaky voice. In such cases, it can be unclear whether it

2304-764: Is far more common in Chinese languages than in English: for example, each of the following words had a distinct Old Chinese pronunciation, but are now perfectly homophones with a pronunciation of yì [î] in Standard Chinese: The poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den was composed during the 1930s by the linguist Yuen Ren Chao to demonstrate this: it contains only words pronounced shi [ʂɻ̩] with various tones in modern Standard Chinese. The poem underlines how language had become impractical for modern speakers: when spoken aloud, Literary Chinese

2400-437: Is generally realized by a decrease of F2 that tends to reinforce vowel backness. One effect of this is that back vowels are most commonly rounded while front vowels are most commonly unrounded; another is that rounded vowels tend to plot to the right of unrounded vowels in vowel charts. That is, there is a reason for plotting vowel pairs the way they are. In addition to variation in vowel quality as described above, vowels vary as

2496-438: Is highly unusual in contrasting true mid vowels with both close-mid and open-mid vowels, without any additional parameters such as length, roundness or ATR. The front vowels, /i ɪ e e̞ ɛ/ , along with open /a/ , make a six-way height distinction; this holds even for the nasal vowels. A few varieties of German have been reported to have five contrastive vowel heights that are independent of length or other parameters. For example,

2592-400: Is known to contrast more than three degrees of backness nor is there a language that contrasts front with near-front vowels nor back with near-back ones. Although some English dialects have vowels at five degrees of backness, there is no known language that distinguishes five degrees of backness without additional differences in height or rounding. Roundedness is named after the rounding of

2688-550: Is largely incomprehensible. However, the poem is perfectly comprehensible when read, and also uses homophones that were present even in Old Chinese. Romanizations have been devised to provide distinct spellings for Literary Chinese words, together with pronunciation rules for various modern varieties. The earliest was the Romanisation Interdialectique by French missionaries Henri Lamasse  [ fr ] of

2784-578: Is low, consistent with the tongue being positioned towards the back of the mouth. The International Phonetic Alphabet defines five degrees of vowel backness (sorted according to backness, with the top-most one being the front-most back and the bottom-most being the back-most): To them may be added front-central and back-central, corresponding to the vertical lines separating central from front and back vowel spaces in several IPA diagrams. However, front-central and back-central may also be used as terms synonymous with near-front and near-back . No language

2880-414: Is not necessarily a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In English spelling, the five letters ⟨a⟩ ⟨e⟩ ⟨i⟩ ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩ can represent

2976-581: Is not read with a reconstructed Old Chinese pronunciation; instead, it is read with the pronunciations as categorized and listed in a rime dictionary originally based upon the Middle Chinese pronunciation in Luoyang between the 2nd and 4th centuries. Over time, each dynasty updated and modified the official rime dictionary: by the time of the Yuan and Ming dynasties , its phonology reflected that of early Mandarin. As

Middle Korean - Misplaced Pages Continue

3072-416: Is one of articulatory features that determine a vowel's quality as distinguishing it from other vowels. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongue height (vertical dimension), tongue backness (horizontal dimension) and roundedness (lip articulation). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPA vowel diagram on

3168-456: Is the tone, the voicing type, or the pairing of the two that is being used for phonemic contrast . The combination of phonetic cues (phonation, tone, stress) is known as register or register complex . Tenseness is used to describe the opposition of tense vowels vs. lax vowels . This opposition has traditionally been thought to be a result of greater muscular tension, though phonetic experiments have repeatedly failed to show this. Unlike

3264-471: Is usually some phonetic correlation between rounding and backness: front rounded vowels tend to be more front-central than front, and back unrounded vowels tend to be more back-central than back. Thus, the placement of unrounded vowels to the left of rounded vowels on the IPA vowel chart is reflective of their position in formant space. Different kinds of labialization are possible. In mid to high rounded back vowels

3360-528: The Book of Han (111 CE) is the oldest extant bibliography of Classical Chinese, compiled c.  90 CE ; only 6% of its 653 listed works are known to exist in a complete form, with another 6% existing only in fragments. Compared to written vernacular Chinese, Classical Chinese is terse and compact in its style, and uses some different vocabulary. Classical Chinese rarely uses words two or more characters in length. Classical Chinese can be described as

3456-528: The Bavarian dialect of Amstetten has thirteen long vowels, which have been analyzed as four vowel heights (close, close-mid, mid, open-mid) each among the front unrounded, front rounded, and back rounded vowels, along with an open vowel for a fifth height: /i e ɛ̝ ɛ/, /y ø œ̝ œ/, /u o ɔ̝ ɔ/, /a/ . Apart from the aforementioned Kensiu language , no other language is known to contrast more than four degrees of vowel height. The parameter of vowel height appears to be

3552-454: The Chinese classics spread through the ruling classes. Korean literati read Chinese texts using a standardized Korean pronunciation, originally based on Middle Chinese . They used Chinese rhyme dictionaries , which specified the pronunciations of Chinese characters relative to other characters, and could thus be used to systematically construct a Sino-Korean reading for any word encountered in

3648-495: The Hangul alphabet in 1446 revolutionized the description of the language. The Hunminjeongeum ('Correct sounds for the instruction of the people') and later texts describe the phonology and morphology of the language with great detail and precision. Earlier forms of the language must be reconstructed by comparing fragmentary evidence with LMK descriptions. These works are not as informative regarding Korean syntax, as they tend to use

3744-579: The Jeju language has a distinct reflex of o . In most other varieties it has merged with a in the first syllable of a word and u elsewhere. An exception is found in the Yukchin dialect in the far northeast and dialects along the south coast, where first-syllable o has merged with wo when adjacent to a labial consonant. LMK had rigid vowel harmony , described in the Hunminjeongeum Haerye by dividing

3840-757: The Jilin leishi , Lee Ki-Moon argued for a Korean Vowel Shift between the 13th and 15th centuries, consisting of chain shifts involving five of these vowels: William Labov found that this proposed shift followed different principles to all the other chain shifts he surveyed. Lee's interpretation of both the Mongolian and Jilin leishi materials has also been challenged by several authors. LMK also had two glides , y [j] and w [w] : Early Hangul texts distinguish three pitch contours on each syllable: low (unmarked), high (marked with one dot) and rising (marked with two dots). The rising tone may have been longer in duration, and

3936-621: The Khoisan languages . They might be called epiglottalized since the primary constriction is at the tip of the epiglottis. The greatest degree of pharyngealisation is found in the strident vowels of the Khoisan languages, where the larynx is raised, and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal cords. The terms pharyngealized , epiglottalized , strident , and sphincteric are sometimes used interchangeably. Rhotic vowels are

Middle Korean - Misplaced Pages Continue

4032-563: The Old Chinese words in the Classical lexicon, many cognates can still be found. There is no universal agreement on the definition of "Classical Chinese". At its core, the term refers to the language used by the classics of Chinese literature roughly from the 5th century BCE to the end of the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE). The form of Chinese used in works written before

4128-500: The Paris Foreign Missions Society and Ernest Jasmin, based on Middle Chinese, followed by linguist Wang Li 's Wényán luómǎzì based on Old Chinese in 1940, and then by Chao's General Chinese romanization in 1975. However, none of these systems have seen extensive use. Vowel height Legend: unrounded  •  rounded A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in

4224-531: The imperial examination system required the candidate to compose poetry in the shi genre, pronunciation in non-Mandarin speaking parts of China such as Zhejiang , Guangdong and Fujian is either based on everyday speech, such as in Standard Cantonese , or is based on a special set of pronunciations borrowed from Classical Chinese, such as in Southern Min . In practice, all varieties of Chinese combine

4320-708: The velum is lowered, and some air travels through the nasal cavity as well as the mouth. An oral vowel is a vowel in which all air escapes through the mouth. Polish and Portuguese also contrast nasal and oral vowels. Voicing describes whether the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation of a vowel. Most languages have only voiced vowels, but several Native American languages , such as Cheyenne and Totonac , have both voiced and devoiced vowels in complementary distribution. Vowels are devoiced in whispered speech. In Japanese and in Quebec French , vowels that are between voiceless consonants are often devoiced. Keres

4416-424: The vocal tract . Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant . Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length) . They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone , intonation and stress . The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis , meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice). In English,

4512-463: The written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary Chinese , which was used for almost all formal writing in China until the early 20th century. Each written character corresponds to a single spoken syllable, and almost always to a single independent word. As a result, the characteristic style of the language is comparatively terse. Starting in

4608-783: The "R-colored vowels" of American English and a few other languages. Some languages, such as English and Russian, have what are called 'reduced', 'weak' or 'obscure' vowels in some unstressed positions. These do not correspond one-to-one with the vowel sounds that occur in stressed position (so-called 'full' vowels), and they tend to be mid-centralized in comparison, as well as having reduced rounding or spreading. The IPA has long provided two letters for obscure vowels, mid ⟨ ə ⟩ and lower ⟨ ɐ ⟩, neither of which are defined for rounding. Dialects of English may have up to four phonemic reduced vowels: /ɐ/ , /ə/ , and higher unrounded /ᵻ/ and rounded /ᵿ/ . (The non-IPA letters ⟨ ᵻ ⟩ and ⟨ ᵿ ⟩ may be used for

4704-572: The 1990s. Many of the gugyeol characters were abbreviated, and some of them are identical in form and value to symbols in the Japanese katakana syllabary, though the historical relationship between the two is not yet clear. An even more subtle method of annotation known as gakpil ( 각필 , 角筆 'stylus') was discovered in 2000, consisting of dots and lines made with a stylus. Both forms of annotation contain little phonological information, but are valuable sources on grammatical markers. The introduction of

4800-596: The 2nd century CE, use of Literary Chinese spread to the countries surrounding China, including Vietnam , Korea , Japan , and the Ryukyu Islands , where it represented the only known form of writing. Literary Chinese was adopted as the language of civil administration in these countries, creating what is known as the Sinosphere . Each additionally developed systems of readings and annotations that enabled non-Chinese speakers to interpret Literary Chinese texts in terms of

4896-581: The 4th century BCE, like the Five Classics , is distinct from that found in later works. The term "pre-Classical Chinese" is used to distinguish this earlier form from Classical Chinese proper, as it did not inspire later imitation to a comparable degree despite the works' equal importance in the canon. After the Han dynasty, the divergence of spoken language from the literary form became increasingly apparent. The term "Literary Chinese" has been coined to refer to

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4992-677: The Hangul spelling. The tensed stops pp , tt , cc and kk are distinct phonemes in modern Korean, but in LMK they were allophones of consonant clusters. The tensed fricative hh only occurred in a single verb root, hhye- 'to pull', and has disappeared in Modern Korean. The voiced fricatives /β/ , /z/ and /ɣ/ occurred only in limited environments, and are believed to have arisen from lenition of /p/ , /s/ and /k/ , respectively. They have disappeared in most modern dialects, but some dialects in

5088-450: The Japanese readings of Literary Chinese, is part of the high school curriculum in Japan. Japan is the only country that maintains the tradition of creating Literary Chinese poetry based on Tang-era tone patterns . Chinese characters are not phonetic and rarely reflect later sound changes in words. Efforts to reconstruct Old Chinese pronunciation began relatively recently. Literary Chinese

5184-577: The Middle Korean period. For example, the Jilin leishi has *posol ( 菩薩 ) 'rice', which became LMK psól and modern ssal . A similar process is responsible for many aspirated consonants. For example, the Jilin leishi has *huku- ( 黒根 ) 'big', which became LMK and modern khu . Late Middle Korean had seven vowels: The precise phonetic values of these vowels are controversial. Six of them are still distinguished in modern Korean, but only

5280-412: The accompanying spectrogram: The [i] and [u] have similar low first formants, whereas [ɑ] has a higher formant. The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness. Back vowels have low F2 frequencies, while front vowels have high F2 frequencies. This is very clear in the spectrogram, where the front vowel [i] has a much higher F2 frequency than the other two vowels. However, in open vowels,

5376-498: The consonant [j] , e.g., initial ⟨i⟩ in Italian or Romanian and initial ⟨y⟩ in English. In the original Latin alphabet, there was no written distinction between ⟨v⟩ and ⟨u⟩ , and the letter represented the approximant [w] and the vowels [u] and [ʊ] . In Modern Welsh , ⟨w⟩ represents these same sounds. There

5472-584: The effect of prosody on the vowel component of a syllable. A vowel sound whose quality does not change throughout the vowel is called a monophthong . Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel sound that glides from one quality to another is called a diphthong , and a vowel sound that glides successively through three qualities is a triphthong . All languages have monophthongs and many languages have diphthongs, but triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare cross-linguistically. English has all three types:

5568-752: The extremely laconic style. Presently, pure Literary Chinese is occasionally used in formal or ceremonial contexts. For example, the National Anthem of the Republic of China is in Literary Chinese. Buddhist texts in Literary Chinese are still preserved from the time they were composed or translated from Sanskrit. In practice there is a socially accepted continuum between vernacular and Literary Chinese. For example, most official notices and formal letters use stock literary expressions within vernacular prose. Personal use of Classical phrases depends on factors such as

5664-568: The features are concomitant in some varieties of English. In most Germanic languages , lax vowels can only occur in closed syllables . Therefore, they are also known as checked vowels , whereas the tense vowels are called free vowels since they can occur in any kind of syllable. Advanced tongue root (ATR) is a feature common across much of Africa, the Pacific Northwest , and scattered other languages such as Modern Mongolian . The contrast between advanced and retracted tongue root resembles

5760-406: The final silent ⟨e⟩ , as in mate . Lax vowels occur in words without the silent ⟨e⟩ , such as mat . In American English , lax vowels [ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ʌ, æ] do not appear in stressed open syllables. In traditional grammar, long vowels vs. short vowels are more commonly used, compared to tense and lax . The two sets of terms are used interchangeably by some because

5856-399: The fourth edition, he changed to adopt a simple plot of F1 against F2, and this simple plot of F1 against F2 was maintained for the fifth (and final) edition of the book. Katrina Hayward compares the two types of plots and concludes that plotting of F1 against F2 – F1 "is not very satisfactory because of its effect on the placing of the central vowels", so she also recommends use of

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5952-580: The high F1 frequency forces a rise in the F2 frequency as well, so an alternative measure of frontness is the difference between the first and second formants. For this reason, some people prefer to plot as F1 vs. F2 – F1. (This dimension is usually called 'backness' rather than 'frontness', but the term 'backness' can be counterintuitive when discussing formants.) In the third edition of his textbook, Peter Ladefoged recommended using plots of F1 against F2 – F1 to represent vowel quality. However, in

6048-620: The historical literary use of Latin in Europe, that of Arabic in Persia , or that of Sanskrit in South and Southeast Asia. However, unlike these examples, written Chinese uses a logography of Chinese characters that are not directly tied to their pronunciation. This lack of a fixed correspondence between writing and reading created a situation where later readings of Classical Chinese texts were able to diverge much further from their originals than occurred in

6144-534: The historical records of all non- Qin states to be burned, along with any literature associated with the Hundred Schools of Thought . The imperial library was destroyed upon the dynasty's collapse in 206 BCE, resulting in a potentially greater loss. Even works from the Classical period that have survived are not known to exist in their original forms, and are attested only in manuscripts copied centuries after their original composition. The " Yiwenzhi " section of

6240-451: The introduction of the Hangul alphabet in 1446. Before the 1970s, the key sources for EMK were a few wordlists. In 1973, close examination of a Buddhist sutra from the Goryeo period revealed faint interlinear annotations with simplified Chinese characters indicating how the Chinese text could be read as Korean. More examples of gugyeol ('oral embellishment') were discovered, particularly in

6336-476: The kanji represents a native word such as the reading of 行 in 行く ( iku ) or the reading of both characters in " Osaka " ( 大阪 ), as well as a system that aids Japanese speakers with a Classical word order. As pronunciation in modern varieties is different from Old Chinese as well as other historical forms such as Middle Chinese , characters that once rhymed may not any longer, or vice versa. Poetry and other rhyme-based writing thus becomes less coherent than

6432-412: The later forms of written Chinese in conscious imitation of the classics, with sinologists generally emphasizing distinctions such as the gradual addition of new vocabulary and the erosion of certain points of Classical grammar as their functions were forgotten. Literary Chinese was used in almost all formal and personal writing in China from the end of the Han dynasty until the early 20th century, when it

6528-442: The latter to avoid confusion with the clearly defined values of IPA letters like ⟨ ɨ ⟩ and ⟨ ɵ ⟩, which are also seen, since the IPA only provides for two reduced vowels.) The acoustics of vowels are fairly well understood. The different vowel qualities are realized in acoustic analyses of vowels by the relative values of the formants , acoustic resonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on

6624-565: The laws of Taiwan are still written in a subset of Literary Chinese. As a result, it is necessary for modern Taiwanese lawyers to learn at least a subset of the literary language. Many works of literature in Classical and Literary Chinese have been highly influential in Chinese culture, such as the canon of Tang poetry . However, even with knowledge of its grammar and vocabulary, works in Literary Chinese can be difficult for native vernacular speakers to understand, due to its frequent allusions and references to other historical literature, as well as

6720-495: The lips are compressed but the corners remain apart as in spread vowels. The conception of the tongue moving in two directions, high–low and front–back, is not supported by articulatory evidence and does not clarify how articulation affects vowel quality. Vowels may instead be characterized by the three directions of movement of the tongue from its neutral position: front (forward), raised (upward and back), and retracted (downward and back). Front vowels ( [i, e, ɛ] and, to

6816-413: The lips are generally protruded ("pursed") outward, a phenomenon known as endolabial rounding because the insides of the lips are visible, whereas in mid to high rounded front vowels the lips are generally "compressed" with the margins of the lips pulled in and drawn towards each other, a phenomenon known as exolabial rounding. However, not all languages follow that pattern. Japanese /u/ , for example,

6912-401: The lips in some vowels. Because lip rounding is easily visible, vowels may be commonly identified as rounded based on the articulation of the lips. Acoustically, rounded vowels are identified chiefly by a decrease in F2, although F1 is also slightly decreased. In most languages, roundedness is a reinforcing feature of mid to high back vowels rather than a distinctive feature. Usually, the higher

7008-509: The literary revolution in China that began with the 1919 May Fourth Movement , prominent examples of vernacular Chinese literature include the 18th-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber . Most government documents in the Republic of China were written in Literary Chinese until reforms spearheaded by President Yen Chia-kan in the 1970s to shift to written vernacular Chinese. However, most of

7104-676: The local vernacular. While not static throughout its history, its evolution has traditionally been guided by a conservative impulse: many later changes in the varieties of Chinese are not reflected in the literary form. Due to millennia of this evolution, Literary Chinese is only partially intelligible when read or spoken aloud for someone only familiar with modern vernacular forms. Literary Chinese has largely been replaced by written vernacular Chinese among Chinese speakers; speakers of non-Chinese languages have similarly abandoned Literary Chinese in favour of their own local vernaculars. Although varieties of Chinese have diverged in various directions from

7200-419: The mouth or the aperture of the jaw . In practice, however, it refers to the first formant (lowest resonance of the voice), abbreviated F1, which is associated with the height of the tongue. There are two terms commonly applied to refer to two degrees of vowel height: in close vowels , also known as high vowels , such as [i] and [u] , the first formant is consistent with the tongue being positioned close to

7296-546: The original reading must have been. However, some modern Chinese varieties have certain phonological characteristics that are closer to the older pronunciations than others, as shown by the preservation of certain rhyme structures. Another particular characteristic of Literary Chinese is its present homophony . Reading Classical texts with character pronunciations from modern languages results in many homophonous characters that originally had distinct Old Chinese pronunciations, but have since merged to varying degrees. This phenomenon

7392-412: The other features of vowel quality, tenseness is only applicable to the few languages that have this opposition (mainly Germanic languages , e.g. English ), whereas the vowels of the other languages (e.g. Spanish ) cannot be described with respect to tenseness in any meaningful way. One may distinguish the English tense vs. lax vowels roughly, with its spelling. Tense vowels usually occur in words with

7488-481: The other literary traditions, adding a unique dimension to the study of Literary Chinese. Literary Chinese was adopted in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature states that this adoption came mainly from diplomatic and cultural ties with China, while conquest, colonization, and migration played smaller roles. Unlike Latin and Sanskrit, historical Chinese language theory consisted almost exclusively of lexicography , as opposed to

7584-446: The palate, high in the mouth, whereas in open vowels , also known as low vowels , such as [a] , F1 is consistent with the jaw being open and the tongue being positioned low in the mouth. Height is defined by the inverse of the F1 value: the higher the frequency of the first formant, the lower (more open) the vowel. In John Esling 's usage, where fronted vowels are distinguished in height by

7680-609: The pharynx ( [ɑ, ɔ] , etc.): Membership in these categories is scalar, with the mid-central vowels being marginal to any category. Nasalization occurs when air escapes through the nose. Vowels are often nasalised under the influence of neighbouring nasal consonants, as in English hand [hæ̃nd] . Nasalised vowels , however, should not be confused with nasal vowels . The latter refers to vowels that are distinct from their oral counterparts, as in French /ɑ/ vs. /ɑ̃/ . In nasal vowels ,

7776-448: The position of the jaw rather than the tongue, only the terms 'open' and 'close' are used, as 'high' and 'low' refer to the position of the tongue. The International Phonetic Alphabet has letters for six degrees of vowel height for full vowels (plus the reduced mid vowel [ə] ), but it is extremely unusual for a language to distinguish this many degrees without other attributes. The IPA letters distinguish (sorted according to height, with

7872-407: The primary cross-linguistic feature of vowels in that all spoken languages that have been researched till now use height as a contrastive feature. No other parameter, even backness or rounding (see below), is used in all languages. Some languages have vertical vowel systems in which at least at a phonemic level, only height is used to distinguish vowels. Vowel backness is named for the position of

7968-554: The right. There are additional features of vowel quality, such as the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position. This conception of vowel articulation has been known to be inaccurate since 1928. Peter Ladefoged has said that "early phoneticians... thought they were describing the highest point of the tongue, but they were not. They were actually describing formant frequencies." (See below.) The IPA Handbook concedes that "the vowel quadrilateral must be regarded as an abstraction and not

8064-412: The school curriculum is taught primarily by presenting a literary work and including a vernacular gloss that explains the meaning of phrases. The examinations usually require the student to read a paragraph in Literary Chinese and then explain its meaning in the vernacular. Contemporary use of Literary Chinese in Japan is mainly in the field of education and the study of literature. Learning kanbun ,

8160-427: The southeast and northeast retain /p/ , /s/ and /k/ in these words. The affricates c , ch and cc were apical consonants, as in modern northwestern dialects, rather than palatals as in modern Seoul. Late Middle Korean had a limited and skewed set of initial clusters: sp- , st- , sk- , pt- , pth- , ps- , pc- , pst- and psk- . It is believed that they resulted from syncope of vowels o or u during

8256-510: The study of grammar and syntax. Such approaches largely arrived with Europeans beginning in the 17th century. Christian missionaries later coined the term 文理 ( wénlǐ ; 'principles of literature', 'bookish language') to describe Classical Chinese; this term never became widely used among domestic speakers. According to the traditional " burning of books and burying of scholars " account, in 213 BCE Qin Shi Huang ordered

8352-445: The subject matter and the level of education of the writer. Excepting professional scholars and enthusiasts, most modern writers cannot easily write in Literary Chinese. Even so, most Chinese people with at least a middle school education are able to read basic Literary Chinese, because this ability is part of the Chinese middle school and high school curricula, and is a component of the college entrance examination. Literary Chinese in

8448-532: The tense-lax contrast acoustically, but they are articulated differently. Those vowels involve noticeable tension in the vocal tract. Pharyngealized vowels occur in some languages like Sedang and the Tungusic languages . Pharyngealisation is similar in articulation to retracted tongue root but is acoustically distinct. A stronger degree of pharyngealisation occurs in the Northeast Caucasian languages and

8544-410: The tongue during the articulation of a vowel relative to the back of the mouth. As with vowel height, however, it is defined by a formant of the voice, in this case the second, F2, not by the position of the tongue. In front vowels, such as [i] , the frequency of F2 is relatively high, which generally corresponds to a position of the tongue forward in the mouth, whereas in back vowels, such as [u] , F2

8640-483: The top-most one being the highest and the bottom-most being the lowest): The letters ⟨ e, ø, ɘ, ɵ, ɤ, o ⟩ are defined as close-mid but are commonly used for true mid vowels . If more precision is required, true mid vowels may be written with a lowering or raising diacritic: ⟨ e̞, ɘ̞, ø̞, ɵ̞, ɤ̞, o̞ ⟩ or ⟨ ɛ̝ œ̝ ɜ̝ ɞ̝ ʌ̝ ɔ̝ ⟩. The Kensiu language , spoken in Malaysia and Thailand,

8736-676: The two extremes of pronunciation: that according to a prescribed system, versus that based on everyday speech. Mandarin and Cantonese, for example, also have words that are pronounced one way in colloquial usage and another way when used in Literary Chinese or in specialized terms coming from Literary Chinese, though the system is not as extensive as that of Min or Wu . Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese readers of Literary Chinese each use distinct systems of pronunciation specific to their own languages. Japanese speakers have readings of Chinese origin called on'yomi for many words, such as for "ginko" ( 銀行 ) or "Tokyo" ( 東京 ), but use kun'yomi when

8832-412: The vowel sound in hit is a monophthong /ɪ/ , the vowel sound in boy is in most dialects a diphthong /ɔɪ/ , and the vowel sounds of flower , /aʊər/ , form a triphthong or disyllable, depending on the dialect. In phonology , diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether the vowel sound may be analyzed into distinct phonemes . For example, the vowel sounds in

8928-540: The vowels into three groups: Yin and yang vowels could not occur in the same word, but could co-occur with the neutral vowel. The phonetic dimension underlying vowel harmony is disputed. Lee Ki-Moon suggested that LMK vowel harmony was based on vowel height . Some recent authors attribute it to advanced and retracted tongue root states. Loans from Middle Mongolian in the 13th century show several puzzling correspondences, in particular between Middle Mongolian ü and Korean u . Based on these data and transcriptions in

9024-417: The word vowel is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them ( ⟨a⟩ , ⟨e⟩ , ⟨i⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨u⟩ , and sometimes ⟨w⟩ and ⟨y⟩ ). There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one phonetic and the other phonological . The phonetic definition of "vowel" (i.e.

9120-452: Was also common to introduce Sino-Korean words that directly competed with native vocabulary. Many Korean words known from Middle Korean texts have since been lost in favour of their Sino-Korean counterparts, including the following. Works cited Classical Chinese Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from c.  the 5th century BCE . For millennia thereafter,

9216-598: Was largely replaced by written vernacular Chinese . A distinct, narrower definition of the Classical period begins with the life of Confucius (551–479 BCE) and ends with the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE. The adoption of Chinese literary culture in the Sinosphere amid the existence of various regional vernaculars is an example of diglossia . The coexistence of Literary Chinese and native languages throughout China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam can be compared to

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