Appendix talk:Old Chinese Swadesh list

Question
Thanks for creating this, Symane; how was this list created, seeing as there's little data about spoken Chinese's pronunciation in the B.C. period? And what does "Old Chinese" mean in this context (i.e., which date range)? I've been adding Tang Dynasty readings in hanzi entries under "Middle Chinese" and some of these pronunciations look similar. 24.29.228.33 05:27, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Please see . Regards. --Symane 05:30, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I've seen it, and it doesn't explain much. It would be great if you could answer the above. Also, why are some romanizations capitalized and others not? 24.29.228.33 05:33, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * According to, this list is made by Mr Laurent Sagart. And "Old Chinese" is often defined to be a linguistic ancestor of the Chinese languages, spoken during roughly the first millennium BCE. As for "Middle Chinese (Tang)", I'll try finding the scholarly report and I hope its Swadesh list will soon be created. --Symane 05:46, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks--it was my understanding that even with the Tang (Late Middle Chinese) and Early Middle Chinese, many of the pronunciations are unclear, so it comes as a surprise that so many pronunciations of Old Chinese (from the B.C. period) are given. I wonder if they're guesses (i.e., reconstructed pronunciations), or whether they're really known, and, if so, how they're known. 24.29.228.33 05:48, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, about the research about ancient Chinese, it'a a big issue. The ancient Chinese is usually reconstructed by many ways. Please see Old Chinese. It's true that different scholars will have different results, so I will still look for others sources to improve the quality of this article. --Symane 06:02, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

If pronunciations are reconstructed, it definitely needs to be specified wherever we give them, either using asterisks or having a little sentence explaining this, or whatever. 24.29.228.33 06:06, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry that I cannot write a sentence myself since I'm not qulified to be a SCHOLAR. The resource doesn't give an explanation very detailed, and all Swadesh words have been imported to the article for now. --Symane 06:17, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Differences
I just added "name." Why are the two lists so different in their arrangement and the terms used? I thought Swadesh lists were standardized. 24.29.228.33 06:06, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The source isn't specially made for Swadesh list. Reagrds.--Symane 06:17, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Non-IPA phonetic notation
It seems to be some kind of Americanist notation, or something non-standard. Can we change that? 24.8.249.193 22:16, 24 May 2013 (UTC)