Who is the next of kin of China people?
To explore the origin of a language, we must first find out the languages close to it and extract their common "genes" so as to obtain the information of ancestors. Linguists classify languages according to their "lineage" relationship, which is the basis of origin research. The classification of languages from small to large has three levels: branch, language family and language family.
For example, English is closely related to Dutch and German, belonging to the West Germanic branch, belonging to the Germanic family, the Germanic family and the Latin family composed of French and Spanish, and the Slavic family composed of Russian and Polish together constitute the Aryan family. The languages in the world can be divided into nine language families.
Above _ The Japanese in Japanese ancient paintings are very similar to those in China.
What language is close to Chinese? Many people may think it's Japanese. Yes, a China person who doesn't know Japanese at all can probably read a Japanese document, because half of it is Chinese characters. The pronunciation of many words in Japanese is very close to that in Chinese. For example, the Japanese number 123456 is pronounced as ichi, ni, san, shi, ngo and roku respectively, which is very similar to Chinese, especially some southern dialects of Chinese.
However, in fact, Japanese and Chinese are far apart, belonging to different language families and very different from each other. For example, Japanese is the so-called adhesive language. The so-called adhesive language is a language that changes the grammatical meaning of words by changing affixes. For example, in Japanese, eating is "taberu", where "tabe" is the root and "ru" is the suffix, and the suffix is changed to "eating べさせ". Then the suffix is changed to "Tabe sase rare ru", which means being invited to dinner. And our Chinese is an analytical language. The characteristics of analytical language are that the word form is unchanged, and the function words (such as zhe, le, guo, ba, bei, shi, etc.). ) to realize the above meaning conversion function.
Above _? Ye Wan Collection is the earliest Japanese poetry collection.
Japanese and Chinese have different word orders. Japanese word order is the subject-object predicate, while Chinese is the subject-object predicate. "Taro ate an apple" means "Taro ate an apple" in Japanese, meaning "Taro ate an apple".
As for the pronunciation of many words in Japanese is similar to that in Chinese, that's because ancient Japan was influenced by Chinese civilization and learned Chinese pronunciation. These words have their own native pronunciation in Japanese. The Japanese call the reading method from Sinology "sound reading" and their own inherent reading method "training reading". For example, the number 123456 is pronounced as hito, futa, mi, yon, itsu and mu in Japanese training. This is far from Chinese.
In addition, it should be noted that writing and language are two different things. Just because the Japanese record Japanese with Chinese characters does not mean that Japanese and Chinese are close. Text is the tool carrier of recording language. What kind of tools are used has nothing to do with the language itself. Chinese can also be recorded in Roman letters (English letters), which is the pinyin that everyone learned in primary schools. We can't think that Chinese is close to English just because Chinese has Latin Pinyin.
Above _? The development trend of Chinese in the past four thousand years
Chinese-Tibetan homology
Since the Japanese are not close relatives of China people, who is the real family of China people? Linguists have found that Chinese and Tibetan have a lot in common, have a common ancestor and are real close relatives.
Many words in Tibetan and Chinese have similar pronunciations, such as the number 123456. Tibetan pronunciation is chik, nyi, sum, shi, nga and druk, which is slightly similar to Mandarin and closer to Minnan and Hakka. In Tibetan, "Sun" is pronounced as Ni, "Sand" as Bussard, "Death" as Shi, "Wood" as mulk and "Water" as Chu. These Chinese-Tibetan near-sound words are found in ancient Tibetan, and the closer they are pronounced, they are obviously cognates. At present, there are thousands of such Chinese-Tibetan cognates.
Above _? Tibetan alphabet
Tibetan, like Chinese, has four tones. The pronunciation of the first, second and fourth sounds in Tibetan is the same as that in Chinese, but the third sound is slightly different. Japanese and English have no tones.
There are many monosyllabic "simple words" in Tibetan, and these "simple words" have their own independent meanings. Simple words can be superimposed into "compound words". Just as Chinese characters have only one syllable, they have independent meanings and can be put together to form words. For example, Shangri-La in Tibetan, which literally means "the sun and the moon in my heart", consists of four monosyllabic simple words: Xiang (heart), Ge (Ji), Li (day) and La (moon), which correspond to four words in Chinese. In Japanese and English, there are many polysyllabic words, but few monosyllabic "simple words".
Above _? Distribution map of Tibetan language in China
Tibetan and Chinese have many similarities in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Linguists have also found that a series of languages such as Burmese, Thai and Miao have such common features: tones, quantifiers, voiced consonants, auxiliary words that determine the meaning of sentences and so on. Therefore, the Sino-Tibetan language family, which belongs to the same language family, all evolved from the original Sino-Tibetan language.
Of course, Chinese also has characteristics that other languages in Sino-Tibetan family do not have. For example, Chinese and Tibetan are mostly subject-object predicate order, while Chinese word order is subject-object predicate order, and there is no change in tense case in modern Chinese. Therefore, Chinese is an independent language family in Sino-Tibetan language family.
Above _? The Evolution of the Sun, the Moon, the Tiger, Me and the Target Person
Where did Chinese originate?
China has found it, and the next step is to find the roots and ask the ancestors. Let's first determine the ancestral home of the Chinese. There are two views in academic circles.
The first view is that the Sino-Tibetan language family originated in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River in northern China. As we all know, the Yellow River is the mother river of the Chinese nation. In prehistoric times, there were a lot of developed cultures in the Yellow River valley, which were called "Yaodu" and "Shunfeng". Chinese civilization was born here, and the original Sino-Tibetan language was also born here. Some of them went out, and their ancestors migrated to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau and even the Indo-China Peninsula in the southwest, and differentiated into Tibetan, Burmese, Thai and Miao languages. Those who stayed in the hometown of the Yellow River and spread to the southeast became the people of China today.
The second view holds that the Sino-Tibetan language family originated in the southwest of China. There is a legend in history that Dayu was born in Xiqiang. Southwest China is the region with the richest Sino-Tibetan language family. There are Tibetan, Qiang, Bai, Miao, Yao, Nu, Dai, Jingpo, Dulong, Lisu, Achang, Lisu and many other Sino-Tibetan speaking ethnic groups. Jia Rong, the language closest to primitive Chinese, is also distributed in Aba Ganzi area in western Sichuan. Therefore, the southwest mountainous area should be the cradle of Sino-Tibetan language system.
Above _? Topography of southwest China
These two viewpoints have their own reasons, and which is right and which is wrong needs to be judged by modern scientific and technological means. In 20 19, Professor Li Jing of Fudan University screened 109 Sino-Tibetan language families, and each language has 100 cognates. Through Bayesian algorithm, combined with molecular biology and archaeological evidence, the analysis was made. Finally, it is concluded that the Sino-Tibetan language family originated in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River in northern China and is closely related to Yangshao culture in Shaanxi and Majiayao culture in Gansu. Chinese was first differentiated from the original Sino-Tibetan language, and other Sino-Tibetan languages gradually migrated to the southwest with the crowd, and differentiated into Tibetan and Burmese.
Coincidentally, in 20 19, a research team led by French sinologist Professor Laurent Xia Jiaer and composed of German, French and Australian scholars also studied the origin of Chinese. They selected 50 Sino-Tibetan language data, and mainly extracted basic words related to agricultural production for big data analysis. The results also show that the original Sino-Tibetan language originated from the Yellow River valley in northern China, and was created and used by the ancestors who planted millet in Yangshao culture in magnetic mountain culture, Hebei and Shaanxi.
Chinese and foreign scholars have different research methods, but the results all point to the first point, that is, Chinese originated in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River in northern China.
Above _? Map of the Yellow River Basin
When did Chinese come into being?
According to DNA analysis, the Y chromosome gene of all ethnic groups in Sino-Tibetan language family belongs to Oα-F5 branch, and this gene was expanded 8,000 years ago, so the historical upper limit of Chinese and even Sino-Tibetan language family is 8,000 years. However, when Chinese was formed is still inconclusive in academic circles. Professor Li Jing's research team concluded that Chinese was formed 5900 years ago, while Professor Laurent Xia Jiaer's research team concluded that Chinese has a history of 7200 years.
The difference is caused by the difference of algorithm and sampling. The real answer needs further study. However, regardless of the results of the follow-up research, Chinese, a language with a long history of thousands of years, is still full of vitality and deserves our pride in China.
Author: big lion? Correction/Edit: Lilith
References:
1 Introduction to Linguistics Cen Yunqiang 2003 Renmin University of China Press
2 "Introduction to Sino-Tibetan Languages" Ma Xueliang 20 13 Ethnic Publishing House
3 "The Origin of Sino-Tibetan Languages" Huang Biquan Economic Daily 20 19.5.20
4 "The Origin of Nationalities Behind the Sino-Tibetan Language Family" was strictly published in Beijing Daily on 20 19.6.5.
The text was created by the team of History University Hall, and the pictures originated from the Internet and belonged to the original author.