Old Yue language
language
The Old Yue language is an unclassified language or set of languages spoken in the state of Yue during the Eastern Zhou dynasty. It may also refer broadly to the languages spoken by Yue peoples in any of the Yue polities in southern China and northern Vietnam c. 700 BCE – c. 100 BCE.
Knowledge of Yue speech is limited to fragmentary references and possible loanwords in Sinitic languages. The longest attestation is the Song of the Yue Boatman, a short song transcribed phonetically in Chinese characters in 528 BC and included, with a Chinese translation, in the Garden of Stories compiled by Liu Xiang five centuries later. Scholars disagree about which languages the Yue spoke, and draw candidates from the non-Sinitic language families still represented in areas of southern China.
Classification theories
Candidates for the Old Yue language include Kra–Dai, Hmong–Mien, and Austroasiatic languages. Chinese, Kra–Dai, Hmong–Mien, and the Vietic branch of Austroasiatic have similar tone systems, syllable structure, grammatical features and lack of inflection, but these features are believed to have spread by means of diffusion across the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, rather than indicating common descent.
Scholars in China often assume that the Yue spoke an early form of Kra–Dai. According to Sagart (2008), this is far from self-evident, because the core of the Kra–Dai area geographically is located in Hainan and the China–Vietnam border region, which is beyond the extreme southern end of the Yue area.
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