Ba–Shu Chinese ( zh, t=巴蜀語, w=Ba1 Shu3 Yü3, p=Bāshǔyǔ; Sichuanese Pinyin: Ba¹su²yu³; ), or simply Shu Chinese ( zh, t=蜀語), also known as Old Sichuanese, is an extinct

Chinese language Chinese ( or ) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and List of ethnic groups in China, many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39& ...

formerly spoken in what is now

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

and

Chongqing ChongqingPostal Romanization, Previously romanized as Chungking ();. is a direct-administered municipality in Southwestern China. Chongqing is one of the four direct-administered municipalities under the State Council of the People's Republi ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

History and influences

Ba–Shu Chinese was first described in the book '' Fangyan'' from the

Western Han dynasty The Han dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) and a warring in ...

(206 BCE–8 CE) and represented one of the earliest splits from

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...

. This makes Ba–Shu Chinese similar to

Min Chinese Min ( zh, t=, s=闽语, p=Mǐnyǔ, poj=Bân-gú / Bân-gír / Bân-gí; Bàng-uâ-cê, BUC: ''Mìng-ngṳ̄'') is a broad group of Sinitic languages with about 75 million native speakers. These languages are spoken in Fujian province and Chaoshan ...

, which also diverged from Old Chinese, rather than

Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...

like other varieties of Chinese. Ba–Shu Chinese started to disappear during the late

Southern Song dynasty The Song dynasty ( ) was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Ten Kingdoms, endin ...

period due to the

Mongol conquest of China The Mongol conquest of China was a series of major military efforts by the Mongol Empire to conquer various empires ruling over China for 74 years (1205–1279). It spanned over seven decades in the 13th century and involved the defeat of the ...

, which resulted in a massacre throughout the Sichuan Basin. The language was supplanted by

Southwestern Mandarin Southwestern Mandarin (), also known as Upper Yangtze Mandarin (), is a Mandarin Chinese dialect spoken in much of Southwestern China, including in Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou, most parts of Hubei, the northwestern part of Hunan, the nor ...

after settlement by people from other parts of China, mostly from present-day

Hubei Hubei is a province of China, province in Central China. It has the List of Chinese provincial-level divisions by GDP, seventh-largest economy among Chinese provinces, the second-largest within Central China, and the third-largest among inland ...

and

Hunan Hunan is an inland Provinces of China, province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the Administrative divisions of China, province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Gu ...

. Phonological aspects of Ba–Shu Chinese are preserved in the Minjiang dialect of Sichuanese Mandarin, which caused debate on whether the dialect is a variant of Southwestern Mandarin or a modern-day descendant of Ba–Shu.

Phonology

Although the Ba–Shu language is extinct, some phonology features of rhymes can be found by researching the local literati and poets' use of rhymes in their works. Liu Xiaonan (2014) assumed that they wrote verses in Standard Chinese of the Song dynasty, but because their mother tongue was Ba–Shu, their verses rhymed in the Ba–Shu accent.

Coda mergers

According to Liu's research, there is enough evidence to assume a significant number of coda mergers had taken place or were taking place in the Ba–Shu language during the Song dynasty: * * and often merged as (). * * and often merged as (), this progress can be abbreviated as . * * and sometimes merged as . * * and sometimes merged as . ** Ditto, which can be abbreviated as . * *, *, and * probably all merged as , and sometimes are dropped entirely (especially in the west of the Sichuan Basin).

Vocabulary

Ba–Shu language had some unique words that scholars identified as possibly being influenced by the Old Shu language.

Notable speakers

Notable speakers of the Ba–Shu language include the "Three Sūs": (, sān sū): * Sū Shì (), who was from Meízhōu (), Chéngdū circuit (). * Sū Zhé (), Sū Shì's younger brother. * Sū Xún (), Sū Shì and Sū Zhé's father.

Notes

References

{{Languages of China Varieties of Chinese Extinct languages of Asia Languages attested from the 1st millennium BC Languages extinct in the 2nd millennium Ba–Shu culture