User:Vampyricon/Proto-Cantonese

Proto-Cantonese (also variously called Proto-Yue and Common Yue) is the reconstructed proto-language from which all Yuet Chinese varieties descend. Like all branches of the Sinitic language family, proto-Cantonese contains strata in its lexicon which have to be accounted for in a comparative reconstruction. Proto-Cantonese is one of the first Sinitic proto-languages for which reconstruction was attempted.

Classification
The following nine features is used by Carlyle to determine whether or not a dialect belongs to the Cantonesic branch:


 * A phonemic Lower Dark Entering tone
 * A phonemic distinction between /a/ and /ɐ/
 * The use of 劏 for "slaughter" (// in Urban Cantonese)
 * The use of 嘢 for "thing"
 * The use of 晏 in the word for "noon"
 * The use of 乸 */ˀna²/ as a feminine suffix for animals
 * The use of 哋 as a 2nd person plural marker
 * The use of 細民仔 or 細佬哥 for "child" (Note that 民 takes tone 1)
 * The use of a combination of 朝 and 早 as the word for "(early) morning"

If a dialect satisfies the majority of these criteria, it is considered Cantonesic. The four dialects of Southern Pinghua included for the reconstruction fulfil a majority of these criteria, whereas the most Cantonese-like Northern Pinghua dialect only fulfills 3. Three of the Southern Pinghua dialects even fulfill more criteria than the uncontroversially Cantonesic, and two of them lack only 1 criterion, which is less than the Kam Tin Waitau dialect in Hong Kong. This result confirms the consensus among Cantonesic dialectologists that Southern Pinghua is a Cantonesic subgroup.

Consonants
Affricates are considered stops here

Vowels
Common Yue also has a syllabic voiced dental fricative []