Sinitic languages

Sinitic
Geographic distribution:	China
Linguistic classification:	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic
Subdivisions:	Chinese Bai (disputed)[1]
ISO 639-5:	zhx

The Sinitic languages,^[2] often called the Chinese languages or (in the singular) the Chinese language, are a language family frequently postulated as one of two primary branches of Sino-Tibetan.^[3][4] The Bai language may be Sinitic (classification is difficult);^[5] otherwise Sinitic is equivalent to the Chinese languages, and often used in opposition to "Chinese dialects" to convey the idea that these are distinct languages rather than dialects of a single language.^[6][7]

Languages

Assuming Bai is Sinitic, it diverged at approximately the time of Old Chinese, perhaps before. By the time of Middle Chinese, the Min (i.e. the Hokkien group) languages had also split off.^[8] Languages traceable to Middle Chinese include Mandarin, Wu, Hakka, and Yue (i.e. Cantonese). As more comparative work is done, additional "dialects" are found to be mutually unintelligible with their parent language; the latest to be separated out as languages were Huizhou, Jin, Pinghua, and Qiongwen, though the remaining Wu and Yue varieties are not all mutually intelligible, or have very limited intelligibility. Some varieties remain unclassified within Chinese.

Sinitic   Old Chinese  Ba-Shu †  Middle Chinese   Min  Minbei languages Mindong Minzhong Puxian Minnan languages Guan languages Wu languages Gan languages ?Tuhua Xiang Yue languages ? Bai language

? Bai (Not all varieties mutually intelligible.) Chinese Ba-Shu † Min Min Bei (Northern Min) Shaojiang (often included in Min Bei) Min Dong (East Min; incl. Fuzhou) Min Zhong (Central Min) Puxian Min Min Nan (Southern Min) Hokkien (incl. Amoy and Taiwanese) Teochew (limited intelligibility with Hokkien) Leizhou Hainanese (Qiongwen) Guan Jin is often considered a separate language Mandarin Chinese Dungan is spoken by the Hui Chinese ethnicity in Central Asia, and has a distinct literature not renderable in Chinese characters Wu (incl. Shanghainese) Wenzhounese (often included in Wu, but not mutually intelligible) Huizhou (sometimes classified as Gan) Gan Hakka Xiang Yue (Cantonese) Cantonese proper (Yuehai) Taishanese is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese proper Pinghua is often considered a separate language Unclassified Chinese Excluding those exclusive to ethnic minorities, the principal unclassified varieties of Chinese are: Shaozhou Tuhua Danzhouhua Linghua

Notes

1. ^ Merritt Ruhlen (1991) A Guide to the World's Languages, p. 145: "According to Benedict (1983), new material on the Bai language(s) indicates that Greenberg was correct, and that Sinitic consists of two branches, Chinese and Bai."
2. ^ "Sinitic" means relating to China or the Chinese. It is derived from the Greco-Latin word Sīnai "the Chinese", probably from Arabic Ṣīn "China", from the Chinese dynastic name Qín. (OED)
3. ^ Anatole Lyovin (1997) An Introduction to the Languages of the World, Oxford University Press
4. ^ George van Driem (2001) Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill. pp. 329 ff.
5. ^ Van Driem 2001:380 "Ba'i ... may form a constituent of Sinitic, albeit one heavily influenced by Lolo–Burmese."
6. ^ N. J. Enfield (2003:69) Linguistics Epidemiology, Routledge.
7. ^ See also, for example, W. Hannas (1997) Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, University of Hawaii Press.
8. ^ Mei Tsu-lin (1970) "Tones and Prosody in Middle Chinese and The Origin of The Rising Tone," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 30:86–110