( Tokhara Yabghus , Turk Shahis )
112-458: The Shatuo , or the Shatuo Turks ( Chinese : 沙陀突厥 ; pinyin : Shātuó Tūjué ; also transcribed as Sha-t'o , Sanskrit Sart ) were a Turkic tribe that heavily influenced northern Chinese politics from the late ninth century through the tenth century. They are noted for founding three, Later Tang , Later Jin , and Later Han , of the five dynasties and one, Northern Han , of
224-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
336-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
448-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
560-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
672-508: A Tiele chief named * Bayar (拔也 Baye ) ~ * Bayïrku (拔也古 Bayegu ) The Song historian Ouyang Xiu rejected the Bayïrku origin of Shatuo; he pointed out that the Bayïrku were contemporaries, not primordial ancestors, of the Shatuo's reigning clan Zhuxie, and that this Western Turkic kin-group adopted Shatuo as their tribal name and Zhuxie as surname after their chief Jinzhong (盡忠; lit. "Loyal to
784-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
896-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
1008-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
1120-455: A group of four Chuy tribes, collectively known as Yueban . The Yueban state survived to the end of the 480s when its independence was destroyed by the Tiele people . After the fall of the state, the people of Yueban formed four tribes - Chuyue, Chumi, Chumuhun and Chuban. These tribes became major players in the later First Turkic Khaganate and thereafter. The Chuyue and Chumi did not belong to
1232-668: A light complexion. Centuries later, the Mongols referred to the descendants of the Shatuo as "White Tartars." The early Shatuo seem to have practiced some aspects of Manichaeism alongside their reverence for spirits and divination. They also believed in a "Heavenly God" or "Sky God" like other nomadic peoples. The Shatuo were also influenced by Buddhism in their sculptural artworks. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
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#17327808886751344-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
1456-451: A population of just 30,000 people, including women and children. By the end of the 9th century, the Shatuo had 50,000-60,000 male warriors. In 821, Zhuye Zhiyi, the great-grandfather of Li Keyong , led a failed attack on the rebellious jiedushi circuit of Chengde . The Shatuo Turks under Zhuye Chixin ( Li Guochang ) served the Tang dynasty in fighting against their fellow Turkic people in
1568-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
1680-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
1792-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
1904-682: A tribe of thousands, their absorption greatly enlarged Genghis Khan's tribe. Mongolian historian Urgunge Onon proposes that Mongols were initially known to Europeans as Tatars because Tatars were compelled to fight as vanguards before the main body of Mongol cavalry and the ethnonym Tatars would then be transferred to all Mongols. However, Bartold, Ushnitsky, Klyashtorny, Theobald, and Pow notice that even ethnic Mongols were often called Tatars, especially in unofficial sources either authored by foreigners (e.g. Turks, Chinese, Vietnamese, Jurchens, Javanese) or by ethnic Mongols themselves (e.g. general Muqali or even Khan Ögedei ). Pow proposes that
2016-631: A unified standard. 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 dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
2128-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
2240-464: A wall spanning 20 km with sufficient provisions to last a year. It was seen as "the northern door to the empire" at the time. The Tang dynasty fell in 907 and was replaced by the Later Liang . The Shatuo had their own principality Jin (Later Tang precursor) under the Tang dynasty, in the area now known as Shanxi , which was granted to them as a fief in 883 by the Tang emperors, and survived
2352-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
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#17327808886752464-709: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
2576-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
2688-590: Is closest to Sin . All of these tribes are opposite Rum, extending toward the East ;... When listing the 20 Turkic tribes, Kashgari also included non-Turks such as Kumo Xi , Khitans, Tanguts , and Chinese (the last one rendered as Arabic : Tawġāj < Karakhanid * Tawğaç ). In the extant manuscript's text, the Tatars are located west of the Kyrgyzes ; however, the manuscript's world-map shows that
2800-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
2912-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
3024-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
3136-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
3248-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
3360-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
3472-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
Shatuo - Misplaced Pages Continue
3584-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
3696-654: The Book of Wei traced the Rouran's origins back to the Donghu , who were of Proto-Mongolic origin. Xu proposed that "the main body of the Rouran were of Xiongnu origin" and Rourans' descendants, namely Da Shiwei (aka Tatars), contained Turkic-speaking Xiongnu elements to a great extent. Even so, the language of the Xiongnu is still unknown, and Chinese historians routinely ascribed Xiongnu origins to various nomadic groups, yet such ascriptions do not necessarily indicate
3808-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
3920-685: The Cumans and Kipchaks . Ochir (2016) proposes that Mongolic and Mongolized Turkic peoples participated in the ethnogenesis of the Nine Tatars, whom Ochir considers to be Mongolic. Soviet and Russian orientalist Leonid Kyzlasov [ ru ] argues that the Toquz Tatars and Otuz Tatars were instead Turkic-speaking, as the Persian-authored 10th century geographical treatise Hudud al-Alam stated that Tatars were part of
4032-635: The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907-960), their number in China fell down to between 50 and 100 thousand. A detailed analysis of the term Shatuo (Sanskrit Sart ) is given by Chjan Si-man. Their social and economic life was studied by W. Eberhard. In "Tanghuyao" the Shato tamga is depicted as [REDACTED] Shatuo nobles established the Later Tang dynasty of China (923-956). During
4144-517: The Jurchen Jin dynasty and also treacherously poisoned chief Yesukhei , father of Genghis Khan ; consequently, in 1202, Genghis Khan allied with Ong Khan , conquered the Tatars, and had Tatar men taller than a linchpin executed , and spared only women and children. The surviving Tatars were absorbed into Genghis Khan's tribe, and the Tatar confederation ceased to exist. Since the Tatars were
4256-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
4368-586: The Later Han in 947. The capital was at Bian (Kaifeng) and the state held the same territories as its predecessor. Liu died after a single year of reign and was succeeded by his teenage son, in turn unable to reign for more than two years, when this very short-lived dynasty was ended by the Later Zhou . The remnants of the Later Han returned to the traditional Shatuo Turk stronghold of Shanxi and established
4480-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
4592-815: The Mongol period the Shatuo fell under the Chagatai Khanate , and after its demise remained in its remnant in Zhetysu and northern Tian Shan . The Shatuo received tribute from the Tatar people from north of the Ordos in 966, while they were vassals of the Khitan Emperor. The early Shatuo were originally called the Turks of Shatuo circuit (lit. Shatuo Turks/Shatuo Tujue ). Occasional references were made to
Shatuo - Misplaced Pages Continue
4704-541: The Mongolic-speaking tribes used the endonym Tatar during the first 30 to 40 years of the Mongol Empire 's expansion, before self-identifying as Mongols, originally a dynastic-state label taken after the 12th-century Great Mongol State (大蒙古國); meanwhile, the old endonym Tatar fell out of favor and would be used to as a derogatory term for rebellious Mongolic-speaking tribes; Pow further speculates that
4816-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
4928-696: The Northern Han Kingdom. The Last Northern Han Emperor, Liu Jiyuan was originally surnamed He but was adopted by his maternal grandfather, the Northern Han Emperor Liu Chong and granted the imperial surname Liu. Liu Jiyuan granted the imperial surname to the Han Chinese general Yang Ye and adopted him as a brother. Under the protection of the Khitan Liao dynasty , the tiny kingdom survived until 979 when it
5040-665: The Uyghur Khaganate . In 839, when the Uyghur khaganate (Huigu) general Jueluowu (掘羅勿) rose against the rule of then-reigning Zhangxin Khan , he elicited the help from Zhuye Chixin by giving Zhuye 300 horses, and together, they defeated Zhangxin Khan, who then committed suicide, precipitating the subsequent collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate. In the next few years, when Uyghur Khaganate remnants tried to raid Tang borders,
5152-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
5264-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
5376-675: The 10th to 13th centuries, Shatuo Turks joined Tatar confederation in the territory of the modern Mongolia, and became known as Ongud or White Tatars branch of the Tatars. Southern Song ambassador Zhao Hong wrote in 1221 that in Genghis Khan 's Mongol empire , there were three divisions based on their distance from the Jurchen Jin -ruled China: the White Tatars (白韃靼 Bai Dada ), the Black Tatars (黑韃靼 Hei Dada ), and
5488-763: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Tatar confederation The Tatar confederation ( Chinese : 塔塔兒 ; Old Turkic : 𐱃𐱃𐰺 , romanized: Tatar ; Middle Mongol : ᠲᠠᠲᠠᠷ )
5600-638: The 9th century indeed denoted Tatars, whom the Gōktürks had mentioned on the Orkhon inscriptions as Otuz-Tatar and Toquz-Tatar and whom Chinese had called Rourans. Writing in the 11th century, Kara-Khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari included Tatars among the Turkic peoples . He located the Tatars west of the Kyrgyzes . The Turks are, in origin, twenty tribes. They all trace back to Turk, son of Japheth, son of Noah, God’s blessings be upon them – they correspond to
5712-601: The 9th-century Deeds of An Lushan , two separate tribes Shatuo 沙陀 and Zhuye (朱耶) ~ Zhuxie 朱邪, among the non-Chinese tribes in the He and Long regions under Turko - Khotanese loyalist superintendent Geshu Han (哥舒翰, d. 757). In 808, 30,000 Shatuo under Zhuye Jinzhong defected from the Tibetans to Tang China and the Tibetans punished them by killing Zhuye Jinzhong as they were chasing them. The Uyghurs also fought against an alliance of Shatuo and Tibetans at Beshbalik. In 809,
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#17327808886755824-777: The Kimek tribal union. According to the Russian orientalist Vasily Ushnitsky, reports of medieval Muslim sources about the Tatar origin of the Kimak dynastic clan are the argument of the supporters of the Mongolian origin of the Kimaks and Kipchaks. The news about the Tatars, from whom the Kimaks separated, according to Josef Markwart , confirms the fact of the movement to the west of the Turkified Mongolian elements. As for
5936-400: The Later Liang, including the Beijing area, the surrounding Sixteen Prefectures , Shanxi and Shaanxi Province . This was the first of three short-lived Shatuo dynasties. The last Later Tang Emperor was a Han Chinese, Li Congke , originally surnamed Wang, who was adopted by the Shatuo Later Tang Emperor Li Siyuan , granted the imperial surname Li and made the Prince of Lu. The Later Tang
6048-490: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
6160-426: The Shatuo after his father's retirement, celebrated in Chang'an the following year. According to Sima Guang , "Keyong’s contribution to the suppression of Huang Chao was arguably second to none." Despite arguably saving the Tang dynasty, the Shatuo sacked Chang'an in 885. Keyong was appointed prefect of Daizhou and governor of Yanmen . From there, he expanded his territory to Jinyang , Zezhou , and Liaozhou. In 890,
6272-457: The Shatuo participated extensively in counterattacking the Uyghur Khaganate with other tribes loyal to Tang. In 843, Zhuye Chixin, under the command of the Han Chinese officer Shi Xiong with Tuyuhun, Tangut and Han Chinese troops, participated in a raid against the Uyghur khaganate that led to the slaughter of Uyghur forces at Shahu mountain. The Shatuo ruling family started using Zhuye as their surname. Zhuye Chixin (d. 888) abandoned it after he
6384-400: The Shatuo took Zhaoyi . Jinyang became the Shatuo capital. It was strategically located between two hills more akin to mountains, rising as high as a thousand meters. Combined with craters and dry riverbeds, the location made attacks from the southeast and northwest hazardous. In the west, the Yellow River made any maneuver costly in time and materiel. Jinyang itself was a fortress city with
6496-418: The Tang dynasty for support. In 702, Shatuo Jinshan, ancestor of the future late Tang warlord Li Keyong , started sending tribute to the Tang court. In 714, Jinshan was invited to Chang'an where Emperor Xuanzong of Tang hosted a banquet for him. During the An Lushan rebellion in the 750s, the Shatuo provided significant military aid to the Tang alongside the Uyghur Khaganate . Yao Runeng (姚如能) mentioned in
6608-468: The Tang resettled several Shatuo tribes in Hedong (modern northern Shanxi ), also called Jin based on the region's ancient name. The Shatuo there were semi-pastoralists who traded in horse, sheep, and cattle. However their way of life gradually changed over the 9th century as they became more settled and intermarried with border people and the Han Chinese. Their population also increased. In the early 9th century, reports of 6,000-7,000 Shatuo tents point toward
6720-597: The Tatar confederation. Tatars were proposed to dwell in Northeastern Mongolia and around Lake Baikal, or between Manchuria and Lake Baikal. Toquz-Tatars and Otuz-Tatars from the Orkhon inscriptions are proposed to be Mongolic speakers (e.g. by sinologists Paul Pelliot , and Ulrich Theobald, turkologist Peter Benjamin Golden , Altaist Volker Rybatzki, etc.). On the other hand, they were proposed to be Turkic speakers (e.g. by Encyclopedia Britannica or Kyzlasov apud Sadur 2012 ). Additionally, Encyclopedia Britannica proposes that Tatars were possibly related to
6832-458: The Tatar confederation. In historiography, the Proto-Mongolic Shiwei tribes are associated with the Dada or identified with specifically the Thirty Tatars. As for the Nine Tatars, Ochir (2016) considers them to be Mongolic and proposes that this tribe apparently formed in Mongolia during the 6th–8th centuries, that their ethnogenesis involved Mongolic people as well as Mongolized Turks who had ruled them; later on, Nine Tatars participated in
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#17327808886756944-412: The Tatars were located west of the Ili river and west of the Bashkirs, whom Kashagari already located west of Tatars. Claus Schönig attributed such contradictions to errors made when the text and the map were copied. Kashgari additionally noted that Tatars were bilingual, speaking Turkic alongside their own languages; the same for the Yabaqus, Basmïls, and Chömüls. Yet available evidence suggested that
7056-450: The Toghuzghuz, whom Minorsky identified with the Qocho kingdom in eastern Tianshan , founded by Uyghur refugees following the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate , whose founders belonged to the Toquz Oghuz confederation. At the same time, Kyzlasov is against the identification of the Tatars of the Orkhon inscriptions with Dada from Chinese sources. However, Ochir thinks that the Datan ~ Dadan ~ Dada in Chinese sources since
7168-484: The Utmost") had moved into Beiting Protectorate , in Tang Dezong 's time (r. 780 - 804). The Chuyue tribe members who remained in the Western Turkic Kaganate , under Onoq leadership, occupied territory east of the lake Barkul , and were called, in Chinese, Shatuo (literally "sandy slope" or "gravel sands", i.e. desert). Shatuoji is also the name of a desert in northern Xinjiang . The Shatuo consisted of three sub-tribes: Chuyue (處月), Suoge (娑葛), and Anqing (安慶),
7280-432: The Wild Tatars (生韃靼 Sheng Dada ), who were identified, by Kyzlasov, with the Turkic-speakers - including the Öngüds (of Turkic Shatuo origin), Mongolic speakers -to whom belonged Genghis Khan and his companions-, and the Tungusic speakers, respectively. The Secret History of the Mongols claimed that the Tatars were mortal enemies of the Mongols: they betrayed Khamag Mongol 's khan Ambaghai to be executed by
7392-475: The Yabaqus, Basmïls, and Chömüls were all Turkic speakers; therefore, Mehmet Fuat Köprülü concludes that in the 11th century, the Yabaqus, Basmïls, Chömüls, Qays and Tatars – the last two of whom Köprülü considers to be Turkified Mongols – could speak Kashgari's Karakhanid dialect as well as their own Turkic dialects, yet those peoples' own dialects differed from Karakhanid so substantially that Kashgari considered them other languages. According to Klyashtorny,
7504-513: The children of Rūm, son of Esau , son of Isaac , son of Abraham , God's blessings be upon them. [In the following list] I outline the geographical position of each of their tribes in the eastern world. They are listed in order [from West] to East, both pagan and Muslim, beginning with those closest to Rūm . First is: Bajanak , then: Qifja'q , then: Uguz , then: Yam'k , then: Bashgirt , then: Yasmil , then: Qa'y , then: Yaba'quw , then: Tata'r , then: Qirqiz . The last one
7616-476: The country of the Tatars. According to Vasily Bartold , this message suggests that the Mongols already then reached the west to the area where their neighbors from different sides were Turkic tribes. Persian historian Gardizi listed Tatars as one of seven founding tribes of the Turkic Kimek confederation . The Shine Usu inscription mentioned that the Toquz Tatars, in alliance with the Sekiz-Oghuz, unsuccessfully revolted against Uyghur Khagan Bayanchur , who
7728-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
7840-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
7952-401: The dispersed Rourans migrated to the Greater Khingan mountain range where they renamed themselves after Tantan , a historical Khagan, and gradually incorporated themselves into the Shiwei tribal complex and emerged as 大室韋 Da (Great) Shiwei . The Otuken region, constantly mentioned in the Orkhon inscriptions as the place of residence of the Turks, according to Mahmud Kashgar, was once in
8064-578: The division of Tatars who remained east, by the 10th century, they became subjects of the Khitan -led Liao dynasty . After the fall of the Liao, the Tatars experienced pressure from the Jurchen -led Jin dynasty and were urged to fight against the other Mongol tribes. The Tatars lived on the fertile pastures around Hulun Nuur and Buir Nuur and occupied a trade route to China proper in the 12th century. From
8176-523: The dominant Onoq (Ten Arrows) Union, while Chumukun and Chuban did. Other sources claim the Shatuo originated from the Tiele. The epitaph of Shatuo Li Keyong , a late-Tang military commissioner ( jiedushi ), states that his clan's progenitor was "Yidu, Lord of the Xueyantuo state, an unrivaled general" (益度、薛延陀國君、無敵將軍), Xueyantuo was a Tiele tribe. Other Chinese chroniclers traced the Shatuo's origins to
8288-424: The emperor of the “Restored Tang”, officially known as the Later Tang , using the fact that his family was granted the imperial Li surname of the Tang dynasty and a princely title to declare themselves legitimate Tang dynasty emperors. In line with claims of restoring the Tang, Li moved the capital from Kaifeng back to Luoyang , where it had been during the Tang dynasty. The Later Tang controlled more territory than
8400-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
8512-572: The ethno-cultural development of the Mongols. Rashid al-Din Hamadani named nine tribes: Tutukliud (Tutagud), Alchi, Kuyn, Birkuy, Terat, Tamashi, Niuchi, Buyragud, and Ayragud, living in the eastern steppe and the Khalkhyn Gol's basin during the second half of 12th century. Golden (1992) proposes that that Otuz "thirty" denoted thirty clans and Toquz "nine" possibly denoted nine tribes of
8624-586: The expanding Liao Empire established by the Khitans. Later historians would denigrate the Later Jin as a puppet regime of the powerful Liao to the north. When Shi's successor did defy the Liao, a Khitan invasion resulted in the end of the dynasty in 946. The death of the Khitan emperor on his return from the raid on the Later Jin left a power vacuum that was filled by Liu Zhiyuan , another Shatuo who founded
8736-607: The fall of the Tang dynasty in 907. The Tang dynasty emperor's had granted the Shatuo Zhuye chieftain Li Keyong the imperial surname of Li and title Prince of Jin, adopting him into the imperial family. They had tense relations with the Later Liang, and cultivated good relations with the emerging Khitan power to the north. The son of Li Keyong, Li Cunxu , succeeded in destroying the Later Liang in 923, declaring himself
8848-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
8960-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
9072-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
9184-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
9296-659: The last of whom were of Sogdian origins. The Shatuo participated in wars on behalf of the Tang dynasty, including against other Turkic people like the Uyghur khaganate, which granted their leaders various titles and rewards. After a defeat of the Chuy by Tibetans in 808, the Chuy Shatuo branch asked China for protection, and moved into Inner China. After aiding in the suppression of the Huang Chao uprising in 875–883, and establishing three out of five short-lived dynasties during
9408-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
9520-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
9632-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
9744-506: The name "Tatar" was the Turkic designation for Mongols. As Ushnitsky writes, the ethnonym "Tatar" was used by the Turks only to designate "strangers", that is, peoples who did not speak Turkic languages. The Turkic tribes living among their Mongol-speaking neighbors were also called "tat" or "tat-ar". According to Bartold, the peoples of Mongolian origin who spoke the Mongolian language had always called themselves Tatars. Subsequently, this word
9856-445: The name-change was motivated by insecurities: either because the enemies held in contempt the name Tatar, or because the subjects used the endonym Tatar for Mongolic-speaking elites, or because rivalries among Genghis Khan's descendants necessitated the delineation of "in" and "out" groups. Turkic-speaking peoples of Cumania , as a sign of political allegiance, adopted the endonym of their Mongol conquerors, before ultimately subsuming
9968-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
10080-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
10192-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
10304-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
10416-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
10528-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
10640-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
10752-625: The subjects' exact origins: for examples, Xiongnu ancestry was ascribed to Turkic-speaking Göktürks and Tiele as well as Para-Mongolic-speaking Kumo Xi and Khitans . The first precise transcription of the Tatar ethnonym was written in Turkic on the Orkhon inscriptions , specifically, the Kul Tigin (CE 732) and Bilge Khagan (CE 735) monuments as 𐰆𐱃𐰔⁚𐱃𐱃𐰺⁚𐰉𐰆𐰑𐰣 , Otuz Tatar Bodun , 'Thirty Tatar clan' and 𐱃𐰸𐰔⁚𐱃𐱃𐰺 , Tuquz Tatar , 'Nine Tatar' referring to
10864-546: The ten kingdoms during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period . The Northern Han would later be conquered by the Song dynasty . Sometime before the 12th century, the Shatuo disappeared as a distinct ethnic group, many of them having become acculturated and assimilating into the general population around them. The Shatuo tribe were descended mainly from the Western Turkic Chuyue tribe, who in turn belonged to
10976-607: The three tribes of the Shatuo: Shatuo, Anqing, and Yinge. The Shatuo population was never large but their warriors had a reputation for being brave and aggressive as well as proficient in siege warfare and archery. They participated in Emperor Taizong of Tang 's campaigns against Goryeo in the 640s and performed with distinction despite their ultimate failure. At the same time the Shatuo also came into conflict with neighboring tribes, leading them to further depend on
11088-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
11200-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
11312-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
11424-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
11536-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
11648-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
11760-443: Was a very capable warrior. He was said to be capable of "hitting twin flying ducks from a reclining position" and was called the "Dragon with a Single Eye" because he had an eye that was noticeably larger than the other. He led Shatuo forces to defeat Huang Chao , who had rebelled against the Tang and taken Chang'an in 881. The Shatuo victory in 883 forced Huang Chao to retreat from Chang'an. The then 28-year old Keyong, in charge of
11872-475: Was bestowed the name Li Guochang by the Tang emperor for his role in the suppression of Pang Xun 's rebel general, Wang Hongli, in 869. Guochang later upset the Tang court by slaying the governor of Datong , Duan Wenchu, in 872. In 880, tensions came to a head when Guochang's forces suffered a defeat to Tang mercenaries, costing him a loss of 17,000 men. This led the Shatuo to turn north to their "Tartar" friends for support. The son of Li Guochang , Li Keyong ,
11984-625: Was brought to an end in 936 when Shi Jingtang (posthumously known as Gaozu of Later Jin ), also a Shatuo, successfully rebelled against the Han Chinese Later Tang emperor Li Congke and established the Later Jin dynasty. Shi moved the capital back to Kaifeng , then called Bian. The Later Jin controlled essentially the same territory as the Later Tang except the strategic Sixteen Prefectures area, which had been ceded to
12096-587: Was completely supplanted by the word "Mongol". The Rourans, Tatars' putative ancestors, roamed modern-day Mongolia in summer and crossed the Gobi Desert southwards in winter in search of pastures. Rourans founded their Khaganate in the 5th century, around 402 CE. Among the Rourans' subjects were the Ashina tribe , who overthrew their Rouran overlords in 552 and annihilated the Rourans in 555. One branch of
12208-762: Was consolidating power between 744 and 750 CE. After being defeated three times, half of the Oghuz-Tatar rebels rejoined the Uyghurs, while the other half fled to an unknown people, who were identified as Khitans or Karluks . According to Senga and Klyashtorny, part of the Toquz-Tatar rebels fled westwards from the Uyghurs to the Irtysh river basin, where they later organized the Kipchaks and other tribal groupings (either already there or also newly arrived) into
12320-544: Was finally incorporated into the Song dynasty . Shatuo Turks that remained on the steppes were eventually absorbed into various Mongolic or Turkic tribes. From the 10th to 13th centuries, Shatuo remnants possibly joined Tatar confederation in the territory of the modern Mongolia , and became known as Ongud or White Tatars branch of the Tatars . Contemporary records of the Shatuo describes some Shatuo men as having deep set eyes and whiskers as well as lithe bodies and
12432-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
12544-531: Was one of the five major tribal confederations ( khanlig ) in the Mongolian Plateau in the 12th century. The name "Tatar" was possibly first transliterated in the Book of Song as 大檀 Dàtán ( MC : * da -dan ) and 檀檀 Tántán (MC: * dan-dan ) which the book's compilers stated to be other names of the Rourans ; Book of Song and Book of Liang connected Rourans to the earlier Xiongnu while
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