User:Vampyricon/Tang Dynasty Chang-An Chinese

History
some shit about the radical phonological changes attested between 玄應《一切經音義》 and the Amoghavadran school of transliteration

Phonology
Since written Chinese languages are written with characters instead of a phonemic script, and traditional Chinese linguistics uses the method of fanqie to describe pronunciations, all this yields is phonemic categories. However, using transcriptions to and from other languages written in phonemic scripts and modifications to the natural pronunciation of characters in such transcriptions

Consonants
The traditional characters used to label the categories of initials of the Qieyun system are included next to the reconstruction. The evidence on labiodentals is mixed, with evidence pointing towards an affricate pronunciation under Amoghavajra, and a fricative pronunciation under Huilin.

There is also a null initial 喻 which appears only before 三等 syllables (seems to all be palatal glide?)


 * historical checked */-t/ > coronal tap/homorganic stop
 * histocial velar nasal lenition? velar stop lenition?
 * denasalization
 * voiced stop breathiness?
 * some tone vs length bullshit?

As per Amoghavadra, 慧琳 specifically:
 * Rising tone <=> Sanskrit short vowels
 * Going tone <=> Sanskrit long vowels
 * 精 <=> c
 * 日 <=> j
 * nasals <=> plain voiced
 * Going tone <=> breathy and nasal
 * velar nasal coda <=> nasal initial /a i e/ open syllables
 * 微 <=> v
 * 乙 with different tones <=> Sanskrit /r/ nuclei
 * 從 <=> j