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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. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, in the Late Shang period.
Old Chinese phonology. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence.
The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE, during the Late Shang. The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts of the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . [13]
The different reconstructions provide different interpretations of the relationships between the categories of Middle Chinese and the main bodies of ancient evidence: the phonetic series (used to reconstruct initials), and the Shijing rhyme groups (used to reconstruct finals).
The Chinese Wikipedia was established along with 12 other Wikipedias in May 2001. At the beginning, however, the Chinese Wikipedia did not support Chinese characters, and had no encyclopedic content. In October 2002, the first Chinese-language page was written, the Main Page.
Timeline of Chinese history. This is a timeline of Chinese history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in China and its dynasties. To read about the background to these events, see History of China.
Old Chinese refers to the Chinese language before the Qin dynasty (Mandarin: xiānqín 先秦). Unlike later periods, there is no systematic record of an entire phonology. The phonology of Old Chinese must be completely reconstructed, based on various pieces of unrelated source materials.
