Chinese languages.

Kirk   Saturday, April 16, 2005, 08:38 GMT
"Korean, like Mandarin and Cantonese, has lost voiced consonants"

I assume you're talking about /t/ /d/ and /p/ (not inherently voiced consonants like /n/ and /m/), but Korean does at least experience voiced consontants intervocalically or after already voiced consonants (of course those are allophones, admittedly). For example, the /p/ in a word like "house" [tSip] is rendered differently according to where it's positioned:

"house" [tSip]
"to the house" /tSip e/ ---> [tSib e]

Similarly:

"Korea" /hankuk/ ---> [haNguk]
"(activity particle) Korea" /hankuk esO/ ---> [haNgug esO]

Also, any word that has /t/ d/ or /p/ naturally in an intervocalic position (like "hada" /hata/ ---> [hada]) receives voicing. So, while it isn't contrastive, Korean hasn't completely lost voicing in consonants, and in the area of loanwords which require voiced consonants, will often place consonants in intervocalic position when possible to achieve the desired voiced effect. For example, English "code" is rendered [k_hod1] in the Korean loanword, as compared to phonologically possible [k_hot], to ensure that the English /d/ is rendered voiced in all forms of the word, even tho in many sentences something like /k_hot/ would become [k_hod1] anyway (such as in "code" [spelled 'kodeu' in Romanized Korean] plus any following word starting with a vowel).
nishishei   Saturday, April 16, 2005, 15:33 GMT
>>> I assume you're talking about /t/ /d/ and /p/ (not inherently voiced consonants like /n/ and /m/), but Korean does at least experience voiced consontants intervocalically or after already voiced consonants (of course those are allophones, admittedly). For example, the /p/ in a word like "house" [tSip] is rendered differently according to where it's positioned: <<<

Oh, I meant correspondence of voiced consonants to the Middle Chinese Guangyun voiced characters. Like "grape" in Shanghainese is /budO/, while Mandarin is /p'ut'ao/, Korean is /podo/ and Japanese is /budO:/. In Middle Chinese, the two characters for grape are both voiced.
Kirk   Saturday, April 16, 2005, 19:09 GMT
Ah, I see what you were saying...very interesting!
evilnerd   Saturday, April 16, 2005, 19:18 GMT
Zachary asked: Does anyone know how Mandarin got to be so large?

I guess the reason is twofold.
1/ Because in the past Northern China used to be way more populous than Southern China.
And because Northern China is flat, whereas Southern China is rugged, hence people in the south were more isolated from one another and their topolects diverged more sharply than in the north.
2/ Because new speakers of Chinese (like the Manchus in the north-east, or the various minority groups in Sichuan and Yunnan) took up Mandarin. Mandarin has always been the language of 'colonisation' (as it is today in Xinjiang, for instance), whereas the southern topolects have always been local languages. This doesn't hold true any longer, of course, if you are to take Overseas Chinese into account!

Cheers,

the evil nerd
flora   Sunday, April 17, 2005, 11:06 GMT
Is it true that Wu/Shanghainese is the oldest Chinese language?


no,no,no......
Wu/Shanghainese isn't the oldest Chinese language.
China is about 5000 years old,but Shanghai city is just about 100~200 years old.Do you know what I mean?
Chinese dialects in everywhere were always changing during the long history.
So I don't know which Chinese is the oldest one actually.
nishishei   Sunday, April 17, 2005, 17:57 GMT
>>>> no,no,no......
Wu/Shanghainese isn't the oldest Chinese language.
China is about 5000 years old,but Shanghai city is just about 100~200 years old.Do you know what I mean?
Chinese dialects in everywhere were always changing during the long history.
So I don't know which Chinese is the oldest one actually. <<<<

No. This is like saying English is only 300 years old because America is only ~300 years old. Shanghainese is a dialect of Wu. Today it is common to use the English term Shanghainese to refer to all Wu dialects; just as it is for Cantonese (Canton = Guangzhou) to refer to all Yue dialects.