Ba–Shu Chinese (;

Sichuanese Pinyin Sichuanese Pinyin (Si4cuan1hua4 Pin1yin1; ), is a romanization system specifically designed for the Chengdu dialect of Sichuanese. It is mostly used in selected Sichuanese dictionaries, such as the ''Sichuan Dialect Dictionary'', ''Sichuan Dialect ...

: Ba¹su²yu³; ), or Old Sichuanese (or Old Szechwanese; ), is an extinct

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...

formerly spoken in what is now

Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

and

Chongqing Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), Postal Romanization, alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a Direct-administered municipalities of China, municipality in Southwes ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

History and influences

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

Western Han dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by th ...

(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 ...

. It started to disappear during the late

Southern Song dynasty The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...

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. It spanned six decades in the 13th century and involved the defeat of the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), Jin ...

, 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 language spoken in much of Southwest China, including in Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou, most parts of Hubei, the northwestern part of Hunan, the northe ...

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

Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The prov ...

and

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to ...

. Phonological aspects of Ba–Shu Chinese are preserved in the

Minjiang dialect The Minjiang dialect (, ; ) is a branch of Sichuanese, spoken mainly in the Min River (''Mínjiāng'') valley or along the Yangtze in the southern and western parts of the Sichuan Basin in China. There is also a language island of the Minjiang ...

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 A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

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