Thread by @ZevHandel

I’ve worked up a minute-long video recitation of a brief passage from the 3rd-century BCE Shāng Jūn Shū 商君書 (Book of Lord Shang) to try to give a feel for what the language might have sounded like around the time these words were first written. 1/

For the content, I chose the first few sentences from Chapter 2, Kěn Lìng 墾令 (Order to Cultivate Waste Lands), in response to this video and request from @stateswarring . For Old Chinese, I used Axel Schuessler (2009). 2/

https://twitter.com/StatesWarring/status/1373190197903462412

https://twitter.com/StatesWarring/status/1373192994099130369

I often recommend Schuessler’s “Minimal Old Chinese” reconstruction system to students of ancient China who aren’t specialists in historical phonology. It’s based on the framework of William Baxter’s influential 1992 Old Chinese, but strives to be less speculative. 3/

Here’s info on Schuessler’s book: /4

uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/minimal-…

It has a few advantages for the non-specialist. The notation has only a few unfamiliar phonetic symbols, so is largely accessible and pronounceable. Schuessler’s book is comprehensive and easy to use (it has a pinyin index and the content is an expansion of Karlgren’s GSR). 5/

It’s also probably more accurate than Baxter for the late Old Chinese period (Warring States and early Han), because many of the “etymological” reconstructions of Baxter 1992 and Baxter & Sagart 2014 are more likely to reflect word features present 500 to 1,000 years earlier. 6/

That said, all Old Chinese reconstructions are highly speculative. While some aspects of reconstructed pronunciations are rock-solid (like the *-s ending that later became Middle Chinese departing tone and modern Mandarin fourth tone), others are controversial or uncertain. 7/

And we don’t know enough to make fine-grained distinctions for different periods and regional dialects. So don’t let anyone convince you that this is what it *actually* sounded like. We just hope it’s a not-totally-off-base approximation! 8/

If you’re interested in a brief, general overview of how Old Chinese reconstructions are achieved, I’ve got a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics on the topic, and it’s free to read on the web: 9/

oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/o…

For a more comprehensive and detailed read, Baxter 1992 has very good, clearly written explanations of methodology and sources. It's also free from DeGruyter: 10/

degruyter.com/document/doi/1…

And @JPRidgway has pointed out that @MarcMiyake has a good overview of Chinese reconstruction in his book on Old Japanese: 11/

https://twitter.com/JPRidgeway/status/1374614305933512705

It would be an interesting exercise to extend this reading across a longer passage. It would also be interesting to do the reading in a few different Old Chinese reconstruction systems to illustrate their similarities and differences. Maybe something for the future! 12/

Feel free to share the link to the YouTube that's in the Tweet at the start of this thread. 13/end

Addendum: Here's a version without any background music.

YouTube link: