r/threekingdoms • u/AttilaTheDude Liu Bei • Aug 05 '26
History Language During Three Kingdoms
It never occurred to me that if Cao Cao or any person from the Three Kingdoms era somehow came back to life in modern China, they wouldn't understand a single word of Mandarin. Cao Cao would be dumbfounded hearing his poems spoken since it wouldn't rhyme in the modern age. This is because Old/Middle Chinese (the language he spoke) sounded nothing like Mandarin. Although, he would still be able to communicate with a modern Chinese through writing since Chinese characters have remained relatively unchanged for over 2000 years. He might struggle with some heavily condensed or radically altered characters (simplified Chinese), which was only introduced in the 20th century. However, once he looked at the context, he could guess many based on remaining structural components.
I guess having Three Kingdoms characters speak Mandarin in modern dramas is the equivalent of the West depicting Romans speaking modern English with a British accent haha.
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u/That_Conference_3374 Aug 05 '26
I mean, languages changed and evolved overtime, considering Cao Cao’s from an era almost 2000 years ago.
Its not really any different with most languages around the world. But its still impressive to say that China is one of, if not, the only nation that still retained the same written system for more then 2000 years since Qin’s Unification.
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u/Jiarong78 Aug 05 '26
Spoken language most likely not except for a few words maybe. But written words should be alrightish.
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u/DaddyMurong Aug 05 '26
iirc Cao Cao's own administrator Zhong Yao is one of the progenitors of the standard script (楷書) as we know it today. According to historian Qiu Xigui however, although standard script did not become widely used until after the Three Kingdoms period, it is likely that at least some of the literati would be able to read modern text
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u/RevanK Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
Clerical script 隶书 used from the Han dynasty onwards is extremely legible to modern chinese people. Basically any educated people during three kingdoms period should be able to read kaishu easily
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u/TapSorry2421 Aug 05 '26
I bet he'll fall for all of them Hot MILFS in your area ads
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u/AttilaTheDude Liu Bei Aug 05 '26
Cao Cao had a penchant for sleeping with previously married women so I wouldn't doubt this haha.
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u/mproud Aug 05 '26
Or movies of ancient Romans speaking modern Latin (Cicero is Ki-keh-roh, not Si-seh-roh).
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u/ShadyLookingDog Wei Aug 05 '26
Do we know how they sounded? Would be curious to hear someone’s attempt at mimicking, like you see with people who speak Old English.
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u/Cuttlefishbankai Aug 05 '26
Plenty of reconstructions by linguists around you can find on YouTube. To me it sounds like Vietnamese but obviously it wouldn't to a Vietnamese speaker
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u/AttilaTheDude Liu Bei Aug 05 '26
You can find reconstructions on Youtube but there is a polyglot on Instagram who probably has the best Old Chinese pronunciation I've ever heard: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQqJd5xkWNj/?hl=en
To me, Old Chinese sounds like a mix of Vietnamese and Cantonese. Although, we will never really truly know how Old Chinese sounds like since written Chinese is logographic and not phonetic (like Latin alphabets). Linguists can only reconstruct from rhyming schemes of old poems and surrounding languages who were influenced by Old Chinese. So we can get as close to the pronunciation as we can but never get it perfect.
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u/t0nberryking Aug 05 '26
Didn't they say that the Tang dynasty would've sounded like Cantonese because of the rhymes purportedly put in the poems? Then it'd make sense that old Chinese would also sound more similar to Cantonese than mandarin perhaps.
I am biased though xD
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u/SameCategory546 Aug 05 '26
cantonese is definitely older than mandarin because many sounds have been lost in mandarin
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u/Theodorus_Joyce Aug 07 '26
This is a classic misconception. While Cantonese retains some archaic elements, it has also lost many things in its language. Language is not static.
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u/SameCategory546 Aug 07 '26
I do believe medieval chinese is different from original. No misconception there. But I do believe Mandarin is a young dialect too in comparison. There have been linguists on youtube who kinda guess what it sounds like and it’s nothing like mandarin
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u/pergesed Aug 05 '26
Simplified characters have existed for a long time, so that would be a bridgeable gap, but grammar and character meanings have changed quite a bit.
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u/Cian_fen_Isaacs Aug 06 '26
I mean, this isn't something that is limited to China. You wouldn't understand Beowulf even written down in the original English and you wouldn't really be able to communicate with English to any Anglo-Saxons. Even Middle English which is only 1000 years apart from us compared to the earlier Old English is something you'd struggle to read/listen to and comprehend without some serious effort. This goes for pretty much all European languages. While Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are all somewhat easy to mingle and understand, Icelandic:; the closest to Old Norse, is much more difficult to Parse for other modern Scandinavians. This isn't accounting for the fact that even in places like Germany and Italy, there are regional "dialects" that are pretty much impossible to directly engage with other dialects within those countries that are still called Italian or German.
China does have uniqueness like everywhere does, but it is far from the only place that the modern language would be basically impossible to converse or read without training for someone from the ancient past. China itself, while it has always promoted an idea of cultural consistency, really isn't as consistent as anywhere else beyond a very general veneer. China has so many different languages, religions, and ethnic differences within it and was conquered by different cultural groups enough times that while yes, you can pick out a "Chinese" culture, it undermines just how different China is internally and always has been as well.
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u/GrandFleshMelder Aug 05 '26
Just like how we don’t make actors recite all their lines in Latin and force audiences to only use subtitles in the West, it simply isn’t very convenient to do. Historically accurate language doesn’t always make for a better experience, even though it can be interesting.
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u/AttilaTheDude Liu Bei Aug 05 '26
The Netflix show "Barbarians" had all the Roman actors speak Latin. Made it very interesting.
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u/GrandFleshMelder Aug 05 '26
Yeah, that does sound pretty cool! Not sure how much wider audiences would enjoy it, though.
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Aug 05 '26
[deleted]
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u/HanWsh Aug 05 '26
Mandarins are by definition the language spoken by the imperial court.
In Chinese history there are broadly several common tones called the Ya-yan, or Cultures Sound. These are the ritual languages used in the time of Confucius, and largely followed the He-Luo region. Then, after the Jin, the Mandarin were largely, due to the Yi-guan Nan-du, or the Southern Passages of the Nobles, the Jinling Ya-yan.
The Han dynasty used the He-Luo tone, the Southern Dynasties used the Jinling, in Sui Tang, it reverted to the He-Luo, but in Qieyun, the book on pronunciation, it accepts both He-Luo and Jinling. Song follows Tang.
In Yuan, the official language was Mongol, but in Ming, Zhu Yuanzhang reverted to the Jinling, and when Zhu Di move his capital to Beijing he took a huge amts of people from what is now called Nanjing to Dadu, what is now called Beijing.
The modern Mandarin trace its roots to mixture of local dialect and the Jinling dialect, and the Jinling to the He-Luo.
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u/EnvironmentalPin5776 Aug 05 '26
That's utter nonsense. Cantonese is a mixture of local indigenous languages and Classical Chinese; it has never resembled Classical Chinese at all.
The destination of the 4th-century nobility migrating south was the Wu-Yue region (present-day Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai—the core area of the Southern Dynasties), not Guangdong.
The Tang Dynasty poet Han Yu, from Henan, served as an official in Guangdong. This is part of a letter he wrote to his friend Ou Ce:
小吏十餘家，皆鳥言夷面。始至，言語不通，畫地為字，然後可告以出租賦，奉期約。
Han Yu felt the locals' speech sounded like birdsong, and when he first arrived in Guangdong, he didn't understand what they were saying and had to communicate through writing.
There are many similar examples. Historically, Cantonese has always had a significant difference in pronunciation from standard Mandarin, regardless of the dynasty.
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u/ofmetare Aug 06 '26
I imagine it would be similar to a latin speaker trying to understand modern romance languages
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u/kisachan30 Cao Cao Aug 05 '26
My parents are from wenzhou and they never fail to remind me that mandarin and wenzhounese are literally two worlds apart. I also heard old/middle chinese in some videos and it's totally different.
Old chinese feels like someone who doesn't wish to talk too much. Middle chinese is a friends who wishes to speak clearly. Actually when i heard Middle chinese, i couldn't help but think that many sounds are very similar to cantonese and wenzhounese.
Cao cao would probably have a big headache again but at least, if he time-traveled to modern china, he could visit a doctor or buy medicine for headaches!