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Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. [a] The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, in the Late Shang period.Bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty.The latter part of the Zhou period saw a ...
- Reconstructions
The first complete reconstruction of Old Chinese was...
- History of China
China was first united under a single imperial state by Qin...
- Reconstructions
The first complete reconstruction of Old Chinese was produced by the Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren in a dictionary of Middle and Old Chinese, the Grammata Serica (1940), revised in 1957 as the Grammata Serica Recensa (GSR).
Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. Although the writing system does not describe sounds directly, shared phonetic components of the most ancient Chinese characters are believed to link words that were pronounced similarly at that time.
China was first united under a single imperial state by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC. Orthography, weights, measures, and law were all standardized. Shortly thereafter, China entered its classical era with the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), marking a critical period.
Pages in category "Old Chinese" The following 7 pages are in this category, out of 7 total. This list may not reflect recent changes.
The Chinese Wikipedia (traditional Chinese: 中 文 維 基 百 科; simplified Chinese: 中 文 维 基 百 科; pinyin: Zhōngwén Wéijī Bǎikē) is the written vernacular Chinese (a form of Mandarin Chinese) edition of Wikipedia.
The seal script is the formal system of character forms that evolved in the state of Qin during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (c. 771 – 256 BC), and later imposed as the standard across the country following Qin's wars of unification.Although some modern calligraphers practice the most ancient oracle bone script as well as various other scripts older than seal script found on Zhou dynasty bronze ...
