Old Chinese

Proper noun

Meaning

Old Chinese

A linguistic ancestor of the Chinese languages, spoken during roughly the first millennium BCE.
Synonym: (obsolete) Archaic Chinese
Coordinate terms: Old Chinese, Middle Chinese

Examples

Ancient words borrowed from along the Silk Road since Old Chinese include 葡萄 pútáo " grape ", 石榴 shíliu/shíliú " pomegranate " and 狮子／獅子 shīzi " lion ". Source: Internet

It is now widely held that Old Chinese did not have phonemically contrastive tone. Source: Internet

First, there are a number of parallels between the morphology of Old Chinese and the modern Bodic languages. Source: Internet

For example, the widely-known word dào 道 "the Dao ; the way" graphically combines the "walk" radical 辶 with a shǒu 首 "head" phonetic—although the modern dào and shǒu pronunciations are dissimilar, the Old Chinese *lˤuʔ-s 道 and *luʔ-s 首 were alike. Source: Internet

There are also a small number of words that have been polysyllabic since Old Chinese, such as húdié (蝴蝶) "butterfly". Source: Internet

Unlike in Bantu systems, tone plays little role in modern Chinese grammar though the tones descend from features in Old Chinese that had morphological significance (such as changing a verb to a noun or vice versa). Source: Internet

Close letter words and terms