There are also histories written just after the Tang Dynasty had fallen. It was considered good form for a new dynasty to write a historical review of the previous one, and there are two retrospectives on Tang, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Book_of_Tang
And there is ironclad evidence from foreign sources. Among others, Japanese histories detail the journeys of emissaries to the Tang Court: https://web.archive.org/web/20260315181529/https://japansoci...
So the theory is bait, and hard to take seriously.
But I'll give it credit for hijacking a genuinely interesting scholarly premise: What is taken quite seriously is the notion that China's first dynasty -- the Xia Dynasty -- never existed. It is of rather mythic proportions; later Chinese would speak of Xia the way Romans would speak of Troy. And there is very little evidence to support its existence. The Shang Dynasty is also supported by rather scant evidence -- and is also mythic, though obviously less so than the Xia.
Worth noting that both the Xia and Shang are exceedingly ancient -- roughly 2000 BC to 1000 BC between them -- unlike the Tang, which fell around 900 AD and is thus middle-of-the-pack by Chinese dynastic standards."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["tang","dynasty","never","existed"],"value":"One corner of China\u2019s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["tang","dynasty","never","existed"],"value":"https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/style/china-tang-dynasty-never-existed-hoax-intl-hnk"}},"_tags":["comment","author_A_D_E_P_T","story_49425819"],"author":"A_D_E_P_T","children":[49426523,49426532,49426664,49426666,49426732,49426763,49427355,49427402,49428185,49428560,49429217],"comment_text":"There are primary sources. There are archeological sites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianling_Mausoleum
There are also histories written just after the Tang Dynasty had fallen. It was considered good form for a new dynasty to write a historical review of the previous one, and there are two retrospectives on Tang, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Book_of_Tang
And there is ironclad evidence from foreign sources. Among others, Japanese histories detail the journeys of emissaries to the Tang Court: https://web.archive.org/web/20260315181529/https://japansoci...
So the theory is bait, and hard to take seriously.
But I'll give it credit for hijacking a genuinely interesting scholarly premise: What is taken quite seriously is the notion that China's first dynasty -- the Xia Dynasty -- never existed. It is of rather mythic proportions; later Chinese would speak of Xia the way Romans would speak of Troy. And there is very little evidence to support its existence. The Shang Dynasty is also supported by rather scant evidence -- and is also mythic, though obviously less so than the Xia.
Worth noting that both the Xia and Shang are exceedingly ancient -- roughly 2000 BC to 1000 BC between them -- unlike the Tang, which fell around 900 AD and is thus middle-of-the-pack by Chinese dynastic standards.","created_at":"2026-08-24T22:05:13Z","created_at_i":1787609113,"objectID":"49426459","parent_id":49425819,"story_id":49425819,"story_title":"One corner of China\u2019s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed","story_url":"https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/style/china-tang-dynasty-never-existed-hoax-intl-hnk","updated_at":"2026-08-25T07:16:17Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"dwohnitmok"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["tang","dynasty","never","existed"],"value":"Going off votes, it appears that there are other folks interested in this thread so I'll add an addendum here.
Let's begin with
> historical studies of phonological and tonal changes in Old (Ancient) and, later, Middle Chinese assertively point to emergence of various Chinese languages that we identify today as Wu, Yue, Mandarin etc to Late Middle Chinese (LMC) (with only exception being Min that had split off from the Old Chinese before Middle Chinese emerged)
I'm going to need to see citations from you in turn for this. In particular I'd be shocked to see any scholar in the last 50 years postulate that Wu split from LMC (again keeping in mind that "Middle Chinese" is basically more of an analytical shorthand than a real language).
To refresh my memory I decided to look at Chappell's introduction to Sinitic grammar: Synchronic and diachronic perspectives (2001), "Synchrony and Diachrony of Sinitic Languages: A Brief History of Chinese Dialects" (which conveniently is included in many course syllabi and hence the introduction can be found online in many places such as here: http://bartos.web.elte.hu/ma/chappell-dial-intro.pdf) and the situation is as crazy as I remember.
This is her summary of Xiang:
> The language of the Chu kingdom, an important dialect before the Jin dynasty was established in the third century CE, was spoken in the area of modern-day Hunan and Hubei. It appears not to have been mutually intelligible with the court language of the Zhou, Xi\u00e0 \u590f, the goal of reconstruction for Archaic Chinese. You (1992) regards Old Chu as the basis for Old Xiang which probably split off from Medieval Chinese some time prior to the Tang dynasty. [pg. 10]
This is her summary of Northern Gan:
> Northern Gan was probably formed during the period between the end of the Eastern Han and the beginning of the Tang dynasty (third to seventh centuries CE) [pg. 11]
This is her summary of Wu and Min:
> The less contentious standpoint would be to posit a common ancestor for Wu and Min, formed by the first century CE, from which both split off. [pg. 12]
This is her summary of Mandarin (which she uses interchangeably with \u5317\u65b9\u8a71)
> The concept of b\u011bif\u0101nghu\u00e0 \u5317\u65b9\u8a71 \u2018northern speech\u2019 is first mentioned in the dialect work by Guo Pu \u90ed\u749e known as F\u0101ngy\u00e1n Zh\u00f9 \u65b9\u8a00\u6ce8 (Commentary on the F\u0101ngy\u00e1n) and compiled during the Eastern Jin dynasty (317-420 CE). Certain dialect words, listed in earlier works such as the first century F\u0101ngy\u00e1n \u65b9\u8a00(Dialects) by Yang Xiong, are given in this later work by Guo Pu as the common term in northern speech (You 1992: 94). This is interesting in that it suggests some unification of the northern dialects of Chinese had already taken place by this time - the period of Early Medieval Chinese in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. [pg. 10]
This is her summary of Hakka:
> In the first view, espoused by Lo (1933), Hakka was already formed in the north in the area of present-day Henan province, before the first southwards migration took place in the fourth century CE following the fall of the Western Jin dynasty in 313... In the second more plausible view, Hakka evolved in the south in the period of the Song dynasty, specifically in southeastern Jiangxi and western Fujian, after migration had taken place [pg. 15 - 16]
This is her summary of Yue:
> The Yue dialects were thus formed in a language contact situation with non-Han peoples in a frontier area, first annexed as Chinese territory in the Qin dynasty (late 3rd century BCE), as outlined above. [pg. 16]
The language situation is both far older and less well-ordered than you are making it out to be. Also just to underscore how "Middle Chinese" is really just an analytical tool than a real language, note that Chappell also almost never talks of "Middle Chinese" other than the "Middle Chinese phonological system" and instead is careful to talk about "Medieval Chinese" instead.
Also profuse apologies to Sagart! I apparently have been misremembering his position and have been confusing it with authors he was arguing against!
But to sum it all up yes, I will stand by what you are asserting is a "fringe theory," but which ample evidence suggests is fairly mainstream, or as you put it
> Summing it up, so far you have presented an alternative timeline of the history of Mandarin that has had a supposedly continuous history of existence starting from (or even predating) early Middle Chinese.
The only contention is to what degree what we call Mandarin existed pre-Tang (as Chappell suggests, there is evidence, but it gets very fragmentary very quickly). But Norman provides clear evidence by the 8th century (which he hedges with 8th or 9th, but a lot of the texts that he is transitively citing are 8th century texts) there is clear evidence of a mature and distinct Mandarin family and there is fragmentary evidence that would push the beginnings of the Mandarin family even earlier (Norman believes no earlier than the beginning of the Tang, which I can accept, but again other authors will find glimmers of early Mandarin even earlier).
And I stand by my original comment to hker, which is that Mandarin has been the spoken standard (or different varieties have been simultaneous standards depending on specific times) for literate speakers across the Chinese empire for > 1000 years (certainly by the Northern Song).
P.S.
There is one clarification I'll make to Chappell's summary here:
> By the time of the Southern Song, early Mandarin extended only as far south as the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, apart from one small pocket where Northern speakers had crossed the Yangtze into the Northwest Xiang area after the \u0100nsh\u01d0 \u5b89\u53f2 turmoil of the mid-Tang dynasty [pg. 11]
Apart from the implication here that Mandarin was distinct and already existed by the mid-Tang dynasty, the reason why I brought up the fact that \u6731\u71b9 is a Fujian native (and spent the overwhelming majority of his life there) is that he is a good demonstration that while Mandarin may not have been the first language of a lot of people in China during the Song, it was the lingua franca. Indeed while Fujian does lie outside the region Chappell is talking about, and \u6731\u71b9 does make reference to a distinction between proper speech and the local language, the fact that his vernacular writing is effectively the same as elsewhere in the empire is strong evidence for a Mandarin-based lingua franca among at least literate speakers.
And finally for a more authoritative source that the core of Mandarin vocabulary remains mostly monosyllabic than "look at Swadesh word lists", there's \u8bba\u6c49\u8bed\u7684\u5355\u97f3\u8bcd (2009) by \u674e\u5982\u9f99 who states in no uncertain terms:
> \u8d8a\u662f\u5e38\u7528\u7684\u8bcd ,\u5355\u97f3\u8bcd\u6240\u5360\u6bd4\u4f8b\u8d8a\u5927\u3002\u5728500 \u4e2a\u9ad8\u9891\u8bcd\u4e2d ,\u5355\u97f3\u8bcd\u7684\u603b\u6570\u6bd4\u53cc\u97f3\u8bcd\u591a\u51fa\u4e00\u500d\u3002\u4e00\u5343\u4e2a\u9ad8\u9891\u8bcd\u4e4b\u540e\u53cc\u97f3\u8bcd\u624d\u5927\u5e45\u5ea6\u589e\u52a0 , \u5230 1500\u53f7 ,\u53cc\u97f3\u8bcd\u624d\u548c\u5355\u97f3\u8bcd\u5e73\u5206\u79cb\u8272 ,\u6570\u91cf\u76f8\u5f53\u3002"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"The Invention of Chinese"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/invention-chinese"}},"_tags":["comment","author_dwohnitmok","story_29516272"],"author":"dwohnitmok","comment_text":"Going off votes, it appears that there are other folks interested in this thread so I'll add an addendum here.
Let's begin with
> historical studies of phonological and tonal changes in Old (Ancient) and, later, Middle Chinese assertively point to emergence of various Chinese languages that we identify today as Wu, Yue, Mandarin etc to Late Middle Chinese (LMC) (with only exception being Min that had split off from the Old Chinese before Middle Chinese emerged)
I'm going to need to see citations from you in turn for this. In particular I'd be shocked to see any scholar in the last 50 years postulate that Wu split from LMC (again keeping in mind that "Middle Chinese" is basically more of an analytical shorthand than a real language).
To refresh my memory I decided to look at Chappell's introduction to Sinitic grammar: Synchronic and diachronic perspectives (2001), "Synchrony and Diachrony of Sinitic Languages: A Brief History of Chinese Dialects" (which conveniently is included in many course syllabi and hence the introduction can be found online in many places such as here: http://bartos.web.elte.hu/ma/chappell-dial-intro.pdf) and the situation is as crazy as I remember.
This is her summary of Xiang:
> The language of the Chu kingdom, an important dialect before the Jin dynasty was established in the third century CE, was spoken in the area of modern-day Hunan and Hubei. It appears not to have been mutually intelligible with the court language of the Zhou, Xi\u00e0 \u590f, the goal of reconstruction for Archaic Chinese. You (1992) regards Old Chu as the basis for Old Xiang which probably split off from Medieval Chinese some time prior to the Tang dynasty. [pg. 10]
This is her summary of Northern Gan:
> Northern Gan was probably formed during the period between the end of the Eastern Han and the beginning of the Tang dynasty (third to seventh centuries CE) [pg. 11]
This is her summary of Wu and Min:
> The less contentious standpoint would be to posit a common ancestor for Wu and Min, formed by the first century CE, from which both split off. [pg. 12]
This is her summary of Mandarin (which she uses interchangeably with \u5317\u65b9\u8a71)
> The concept of b\u011bif\u0101nghu\u00e0 \u5317\u65b9\u8a71 \u2018northern speech\u2019 is first mentioned in the dialect work by Guo Pu \u90ed\u749e known as F\u0101ngy\u00e1n Zh\u00f9 \u65b9\u8a00\u6ce8 (Commentary on the F\u0101ngy\u00e1n) and compiled during the Eastern Jin dynasty (317-420 CE). Certain dialect words, listed in earlier works such as the first century F\u0101ngy\u00e1n \u65b9\u8a00(Dialects) by Yang Xiong, are given in this later work by Guo Pu as the common term in northern speech (You 1992: 94). This is interesting in that it suggests some unification of the northern dialects of Chinese had already taken place by this time - the period of Early Medieval Chinese in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. [pg. 10]
This is her summary of Hakka:
> In the first view, espoused by Lo (1933), Hakka was already formed in the north in the area of present-day Henan province, before the first southwards migration took place in the fourth century CE following the fall of the Western Jin dynasty in 313... In the second more plausible view, Hakka evolved in the south in the period of the Song dynasty, specifically in southeastern Jiangxi and western Fujian, after migration had taken place [pg. 15 - 16]
This is her summary of Yue:
> The Yue dialects were thus formed in a language contact situation with non-Han peoples in a frontier area, first annexed as Chinese territory in the Qin dynasty (late 3rd century BCE), as outlined above. [pg. 16]
The language situation is both far older and less well-ordered than you are making it out to be. Also just to underscore how "Middle Chinese" is really just an analytical tool than a real language, note that Chappell also almost never talks of "Middle Chinese" other than the "Middle Chinese phonological system" and instead is careful to talk about "Medieval Chinese" instead.
Also profuse apologies to Sagart! I apparently have been misremembering his position and have been confusing it with authors he was arguing against!
But to sum it all up yes, I will stand by what you are asserting is a "fringe theory," but which ample evidence suggests is fairly mainstream, or as you put it
> Summing it up, so far you have presented an alternative timeline of the history of Mandarin that has had a supposedly continuous history of existence starting from (or even predating) early Middle Chinese.
The only contention is to what degree what we call Mandarin existed pre-Tang (as Chappell suggests, there is evidence, but it gets very fragmentary very quickly). But Norman provides clear evidence by the 8th century (which he hedges with 8th or 9th, but a lot of the texts that he is transitively citing are 8th century texts) there is clear evidence of a mature and distinct Mandarin family and there is fragmentary evidence that would push the beginnings of the Mandarin family even earlier (Norman believes no earlier than the beginning of the Tang, which I can accept, but again other authors will find glimmers of early Mandarin even earlier).
And I stand by my original comment to hker, which is that Mandarin has been the spoken standard (or different varieties have been simultaneous standards depending on specific times) for literate speakers across the Chinese empire for > 1000 years (certainly by the Northern Song).
P.S.
There is one clarification I'll make to Chappell's summary here:
> By the time of the Southern Song, early Mandarin extended only as far south as the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, apart from one small pocket where Northern speakers had crossed the Yangtze into the Northwest Xiang area after the \u0100nsh\u01d0 \u5b89\u53f2 turmoil of the mid-Tang dynasty [pg. 11]
Apart from the implication here that Mandarin was distinct and already existed by the mid-Tang dynasty, the reason why I brought up the fact that \u6731\u71b9 is a Fujian native (and spent the overwhelming majority of his life there) is that he is a good demonstration that while Mandarin may not have been the first language of a lot of people in China during the Song, it was the lingua franca. Indeed while Fujian does lie outside the region Chappell is talking about, and \u6731\u71b9 does make reference to a distinction between proper speech and the local language, the fact that his vernacular writing is effectively the same as elsewhere in the empire is strong evidence for a Mandarin-based lingua franca among at least literate speakers.
And finally for a more authoritative source that the core of Mandarin vocabulary remains mostly monosyllabic than "look at Swadesh word lists", there's \u8bba\u6c49\u8bed\u7684\u5355\u97f3\u8bcd (2009) by \u674e\u5982\u9f99 who states in no uncertain terms:
> \u8d8a\u662f\u5e38\u7528\u7684\u8bcd ,\u5355\u97f3\u8bcd\u6240\u5360\u6bd4\u4f8b\u8d8a\u5927\u3002\u5728500 \u4e2a\u9ad8\u9891\u8bcd\u4e2d ,\u5355\u97f3\u8bcd\u7684\u603b\u6570\u6bd4\u53cc\u97f3\u8bcd\u591a\u51fa\u4e00\u500d\u3002\u4e00\u5343\u4e2a\u9ad8\u9891\u8bcd\u4e4b\u540e\u53cc\u97f3\u8bcd\u624d\u5927\u5e45\u5ea6\u589e\u52a0 , \u5230 1500\u53f7 ,\u53cc\u97f3\u8bcd\u624d\u548c\u5355\u97f3\u8bcd\u5e73\u5206\u79cb\u8272 ,\u6570\u91cf\u76f8\u5f53\u3002","created_at":"2021-12-13T22:58:54Z","created_at_i":1639436334,"objectID":"29545816","parent_id":29534040,"story_id":29516272,"story_title":"The Invention of Chinese","story_url":"https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/invention-chinese","updated_at":"2024-09-20T10:03:47Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"dwohnitmok"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["tang","dynasty","never","existed"],"value":"PART 2:
So let's return to my assertion that often times Mandarin is studied as the standard Song vernacular and has roots that date back much further.
Norman explicitly calls out Mandarin as the predominant language of the Song Dynasty and dating to the Tang.
"The first type includes the Jianghuai dialects and Southwest Mandarin and may be traced to the southern type of Mandarin which flourished during the Song-Yuan Period. The second type includes the rest and may be traced to the northern type of Mandarin of earlier times.... It is also shown that Mandarin as a dialect group was already in existence in the eighth or ninth century, that is, in the middle of the Tang dynasty." [Norman, "Some Thoughts on the Early Development of Mandarin", In Memory of Mantaro Hashimoto, 1997, pg. 21-28]
But I believe you are also missing my point in linking to my other comment.
Everything I've listed there indeed has a pre-Song history (most from Sui/Tang, some from the Northern/Southern Dynasties, \u662f as a copula Mair will argue comes even from the Warring States period). They are also why some studies of Mandarin will take Mandarin to have started in the Tang (or earlier!). But taken as an ensemble they are the DNA of what structurally (rather than just phonologically) distinguishes Mandarin from the other Sinitic families and the fact that they are ubiquitous across Song vernacular from all parts of China make it pretty overwhelming that the standard Song vernacular is structurally a Mandarin language, rather than any other Sinitic family. This is a harder case to make pre-Song (but still can be and has been made), but it's very clear by the Song.
yorwba's question is a very reasonable one precisely because the things you've raised are not uniform across all Sinitic families. \u90a3 is not the usual demonstrative in a lot of these families (rather we have in various cases including Min and Wu, where we have demonstratives such as \u5f7c or \u8a31 alongside some varieties of \u723e). Likewise \u662f is not the usual copula in some Sinitic families (e.g. Yue where the usual copula is \u4fc2). Another hallmark is pronouns where \u4f60 and especially \u4ed6 are not the usual second and third person pronouns (the third person is especially different, where it is \u4f62 in Yue or other various versions of \u6e20 or \u4f0a in other families).
This is what we mean when we say that the different Sinitic families differ in grammar and structure rather than just phonology, and why it is possible on the basis of this grammar and structure alone to identify something as Mandarin.
More to the point we can and do analyze the grammar and structure of various medieval Sinitic families separate from their phonology. Open up any post-Tang period-specific textbook and that is exactly how it is laid out (usually the first chapter is phonology and then the rest, vast majority of the book is grammar and structure). We can do this as soon as we have a flourishing vernacular body of writing, which starts roughly in the Tang (with fits and starts before that starting in the Three Kingdoms), but really hits its stride in the Song. The only reason we have to resort to phonological-specific measures for OC is because it is unclear whether we have any vernacular writing from that time period and thus we have to use phonological hints to try to deduce to what extent a diglossia existed.
And what of the particulars of my other comment? My assertions about the pronouns, demonstratives, etc? Well you can find those in any intro Song vernacular textbook. For example I happen to have \u5b8b\u4ee3\u8a9e\u8a00\u7814\u7a76 (2001) by \u674e\u6587\u6fa4 on my bookshelf at the moment and I can back up everything I wrote off the cuff there in his \u8a9e\u6cd5\u7de8 chapter starting on page 214. You could also cross-check against the \u8fd1\u4ee3\u6c49\u8bed\u6982\u8bba by \u8881\u5bbe (which regretfully I do not have on-hand at the moment so I can't give you specific page citations). It's also blatantly obvious as soon as you start reading various Song Buddhist dialogues, \u7406\u5b78 dialogues (not their Classical Chinese prose works but their vernacular dialogue collections), \u8a71\u672c, particularly vernacular \u5b8b\u8a5e, or any other Song vernacular works that what I'm saying there is borne out.
> the phonological and comparative regional linguistic studies have been the single main instrument that has made the reconstruction of Old (Ancient) and Middle Chinese languages possible. Which also includes the understanding of the grammar of Old Chinese and which was vastly different even from that of Middle Chinese.
First a correction: The knowledge we have of OC as a living language is extremely limited. Hence it is debatable whether we have any good understanding of the grammar of OC (the Chinese side of scholarship usually rejects this and says we do have a good understanding of OC through Zhou texts) in the same we have for MC. What Wikipedia often calls OC is debated whether it was actually ever spoken by anyone, or is just an artifact of a Classical Chinese that was in fact never a living language. Mair makes this argument forcefully in his seminal 1994 article "Buddhism and the Rise of Written Vernacular in East Asia:"
> Linguistic data that LS [Literary Sinitic, i.e. Old Chinese as represented by Warring States and Sprint-Autumn texts] and VS [Vernacular Sinitic, i.e. the true living, spoken language] have been distinct systems as far back as they can be traced. This is certainly true from the Warring States period on, but I suspect that eventually we will be able to demonstrate conclusively that LS, starting with its earliest stage in the oracle shell and bone inscriptions (around 1200 B.C.E.), was so obviously abbreviated and so replete with obligatory nonvernacular conventions used only in writing that it never came close to reflecting any contemporary living variety of Sinitic speech. [Mair, "Buddhism and the Rise of the Written Vernacular in East Asia," 1994]
Now I'm personally not sure how much I believe that (and e.g. the Chinese side of scholarship generally rejects this argument), but I bring it up to underscore again the reason we cannot do a phonologically independent analysis of living (at the time) Sinitic varieties before the Tang era (well kind of, we have some vernacular before then, but certainly by the Han) is because it's not clear we have any direct written evidence of them, whereas by the Song it's extremely obvious that we have a fairly true-to-life structural reflection in writing of how people actually spoke, and hence we do not need to rely solely, or even mostly, on phonological analyses."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"The Invention of Chinese"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/invention-chinese"}},"_tags":["comment","author_dwohnitmok","story_29516272"],"author":"dwohnitmok","comment_text":"PART 2:
So let's return to my assertion that often times Mandarin is studied as the standard Song vernacular and has roots that date back much further.
Norman explicitly calls out Mandarin as the predominant language of the Song Dynasty and dating to the Tang.
"The first type includes the Jianghuai dialects and Southwest Mandarin and may be traced to the southern type of Mandarin which flourished during the Song-Yuan Period. The second type includes the rest and may be traced to the northern type of Mandarin of earlier times.... It is also shown that Mandarin as a dialect group was already in existence in the eighth or ninth century, that is, in the middle of the Tang dynasty." [Norman, "Some Thoughts on the Early Development of Mandarin", In Memory of Mantaro Hashimoto, 1997, pg. 21-28]
But I believe you are also missing my point in linking to my other comment.
Everything I've listed there indeed has a pre-Song history (most from Sui/Tang, some from the Northern/Southern Dynasties, \u662f as a copula Mair will argue comes even from the Warring States period). They are also why some studies of Mandarin will take Mandarin to have started in the Tang (or earlier!). But taken as an ensemble they are the DNA of what structurally (rather than just phonologically) distinguishes Mandarin from the other Sinitic families and the fact that they are ubiquitous across Song vernacular from all parts of China make it pretty overwhelming that the standard Song vernacular is structurally a Mandarin language, rather than any other Sinitic family. This is a harder case to make pre-Song (but still can be and has been made), but it's very clear by the Song.
yorwba's question is a very reasonable one precisely because the things you've raised are not uniform across all Sinitic families. \u90a3 is not the usual demonstrative in a lot of these families (rather we have in various cases including Min and Wu, where we have demonstratives such as \u5f7c or \u8a31 alongside some varieties of \u723e). Likewise \u662f is not the usual copula in some Sinitic families (e.g. Yue where the usual copula is \u4fc2). Another hallmark is pronouns where \u4f60 and especially \u4ed6 are not the usual second and third person pronouns (the third person is especially different, where it is \u4f62 in Yue or other various versions of \u6e20 or \u4f0a in other families).
This is what we mean when we say that the different Sinitic families differ in grammar and structure rather than just phonology, and why it is possible on the basis of this grammar and structure alone to identify something as Mandarin.
More to the point we can and do analyze the grammar and structure of various medieval Sinitic families separate from their phonology. Open up any post-Tang period-specific textbook and that is exactly how it is laid out (usually the first chapter is phonology and then the rest, vast majority of the book is grammar and structure). We can do this as soon as we have a flourishing vernacular body of writing, which starts roughly in the Tang (with fits and starts before that starting in the Three Kingdoms), but really hits its stride in the Song. The only reason we have to resort to phonological-specific measures for OC is because it is unclear whether we have any vernacular writing from that time period and thus we have to use phonological hints to try to deduce to what extent a diglossia existed.
And what of the particulars of my other comment? My assertions about the pronouns, demonstratives, etc? Well you can find those in any intro Song vernacular textbook. For example I happen to have \u5b8b\u4ee3\u8a9e\u8a00\u7814\u7a76 (2001) by \u674e\u6587\u6fa4 on my bookshelf at the moment and I can back up everything I wrote off the cuff there in his \u8a9e\u6cd5\u7de8 chapter starting on page 214. You could also cross-check against the \u8fd1\u4ee3\u6c49\u8bed\u6982\u8bba by \u8881\u5bbe (which regretfully I do not have on-hand at the moment so I can't give you specific page citations). It's also blatantly obvious as soon as you start reading various Song Buddhist dialogues, \u7406\u5b78 dialogues (not their Classical Chinese prose works but their vernacular dialogue collections), \u8a71\u672c, particularly vernacular \u5b8b\u8a5e, or any other Song vernacular works that what I'm saying there is borne out.
> the phonological and comparative regional linguistic studies have been the single main instrument that has made the reconstruction of Old (Ancient) and Middle Chinese languages possible. Which also includes the understanding of the grammar of Old Chinese and which was vastly different even from that of Middle Chinese.
First a correction: The knowledge we have of OC as a living language is extremely limited. Hence it is debatable whether we have any good understanding of the grammar of OC (the Chinese side of scholarship usually rejects this and says we do have a good understanding of OC through Zhou texts) in the same we have for MC. What Wikipedia often calls OC is debated whether it was actually ever spoken by anyone, or is just an artifact of a Classical Chinese that was in fact never a living language. Mair makes this argument forcefully in his seminal 1994 article "Buddhism and the Rise of Written Vernacular in East Asia:"
> Linguistic data that LS [Literary Sinitic, i.e. Old Chinese as represented by Warring States and Sprint-Autumn texts] and VS [Vernacular Sinitic, i.e. the true living, spoken language] have been distinct systems as far back as they can be traced. This is certainly true from the Warring States period on, but I suspect that eventually we will be able to demonstrate conclusively that LS, starting with its earliest stage in the oracle shell and bone inscriptions (around 1200 B.C.E.), was so obviously abbreviated and so replete with obligatory nonvernacular conventions used only in writing that it never came close to reflecting any contemporary living variety of Sinitic speech. [Mair, "Buddhism and the Rise of the Written Vernacular in East Asia," 1994]
Now I'm personally not sure how much I believe that (and e.g. the Chinese side of scholarship generally rejects this argument), but I bring it up to underscore again the reason we cannot do a phonologically independent analysis of living (at the time) Sinitic varieties before the Tang era (well kind of, we have some vernacular before then, but certainly by the Han) is because it's not clear we have any direct written evidence of them, whereas by the Song it's extremely obvious that we have a fairly true-to-life structural reflection in writing of how people actually spoke, and hence we do not need to rely solely, or even mostly, on phonological analyses.","created_at":"2021-12-12T21:13:52Z","created_at_i":1639343632,"objectID":"29533678","parent_id":29528951,"story_id":29516272,"story_title":"The Invention of Chinese","story_url":"https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/invention-chinese","updated_at":"2024-09-20T10:02:12Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"twblalock"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["tang","dynasty","never","existed"],"value":"> Not sure why you label generalisation essentialism?
Because you generalize by deploying tired old tropes about Confucianism and a conformist, "harmonious" society, which were never really true.
> Your opinion appears biased in terms of: (a) 20th century; (b) Tokyo.
Well, considering that we are discussing Tokyo in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the context of the article posted here, that seems appropriate.
> Furthermore, while protest movements have of course existed I would argue that they are few and relatively late to develop (massive discontent precedes) relative to other societies.
Demonstrably untrue. During the late 19th century, and most of the 20th century, protests were a significant aspect of Japanese society -- more so than in many western countries.
> It is a fact that many of Japan's oldest buildings are direct derivations of Tang Dynasty architecture, and in some cases (Kyoto) city layouts (urban plans) were directly copied from China.
If you were talking about city street layouts instead of architecture, you should have written about city street layouts instead of writing about architecture. In any case, Kyoto is unique within Japan. Within Kyoto, the urban architecture is not really Chinese, even if the street layout used to be. The primary influence of Chinese architecture in Japan can be seen in temples, not in urban buildings."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"The Japanese Urban Zoning System"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/the-japanese-zoning-system.html"}},"_tags":["comment","author_twblalock","story_12325992"],"author":"twblalock","children":[12329622],"comment_text":"> Not sure why you label generalisation essentialism?
Because you generalize by deploying tired old tropes about Confucianism and a conformist, "harmonious" society, which were never really true.
> Your opinion appears biased in terms of: (a) 20th century; (b) Tokyo.
Well, considering that we are discussing Tokyo in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the context of the article posted here, that seems appropriate.
> Furthermore, while protest movements have of course existed I would argue that they are few and relatively late to develop (massive discontent precedes) relative to other societies.
Demonstrably untrue. During the late 19th century, and most of the 20th century, protests were a significant aspect of Japanese society -- more so than in many western countries.
> It is a fact that many of Japan's oldest buildings are direct derivations of Tang Dynasty architecture, and in some cases (Kyoto) city layouts (urban plans) were directly copied from China.
If you were talking about city street layouts instead of architecture, you should have written about city street layouts instead of writing about architecture. In any case, Kyoto is unique within Japan. Within Kyoto, the urban architecture is not really Chinese, even if the street layout used to be. The primary influence of Chinese architecture in Japan can be seen in temples, not in urban buildings.","created_at":"2016-08-21T03:02:54Z","created_at_i":1471748574,"objectID":"12329209","parent_id":12329036,"story_id":12325992,"story_title":"The Japanese Urban Zoning System","story_url":"http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/the-japanese-zoning-system.html","updated_at":"2024-09-19T23:35:11Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"jcranmer"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["tang","dynasty","never","existed"],"value":"> Is it true to say that China is the longest surviving civilization?
Not really. The Chinese tend to emphasize viewing their history through a lens of continuity and a single notional empire whereas the Western history tends to view their history as discontinuous and fractured empires. But when you start comparing the actual effects of these empires and their rises and falls, they are actually much more similar.
For example, after the Crisis of the Third Century, the Roman Empire was effectively partitioned into a Western and Eastern Empire. The Western Empire proceeded to decentralize itself out of existence over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries, but it recoalesced under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties into the Holy Roman Empire by 800 (before splitting up into effectively a Frankish kingdom and the Germanic kingdom of the HRE). The Eastern Roman Empire lasted until around 1200, when the Fourth Crusade conquered it instead (a conquest which didn't last, but the Byzantines never recovered and the Ottomans finally put them out of their misery 250 years later). It's worth noting that pretty much all of the people I've cited considered themselves the true heirs of the Roman Empire.
Meanwhile in China, the Han dynasty crashed hard in the early 200s, with three major successor states cropping up. One of these managed to conquer the others, so the successive dynasty was the Jin dynasty. Of course, the Jin last control of most of their territory, which fragmented into the Sixteen Kingdoms, but the entire era is still called the Jin dynasty. After the final collapse of the Jin, the north/south dichotomy continued with the Northern and Southern dynasties, which is again a successive series of powers vying for control eventually coalescing into the Sui dynasty after one wins out, which quickly transitions to the Tang dynasty, the first truly unified China since the fall of the Han dynasty. After about 300 years, the Tang dynasty collapses into a major period of disunity, the next truly unified China again taking 300 years to crop up again.
There's a lot of similarity. The major difference is that Western Europe never reunified into a single unitary state (unless you want to count the extremely short lived Napoleonic Empire and Third Reich). But Western Europe did have a successor state that directly retained the traditions from the Roman Empire (namely, the Byzantines) and could plausibly claim to have no break in continuity (the Byzantines never called themselves anything other than the Roman Empire), and all of the major successor states directly drew inspiration and customs from the Roman Empire, rather like China. The writing system, the state religion, the bureaucratic apparatus, the legal system--all of these are derived from the Roman Empire in Western Europe, just as much as they are derived from the Qin and Han dynasties in China."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Studying the demise of historic civilisations"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse"}},"_tags":["comment","author_jcranmer","story_19307759"],"author":"jcranmer","children":[19308536],"comment_text":"> Is it true to say that China is the longest surviving civilization?
Not really. The Chinese tend to emphasize viewing their history through a lens of continuity and a single notional empire whereas the Western history tends to view their history as discontinuous and fractured empires. But when you start comparing the actual effects of these empires and their rises and falls, they are actually much more similar.
For example, after the Crisis of the Third Century, the Roman Empire was effectively partitioned into a Western and Eastern Empire. The Western Empire proceeded to decentralize itself out of existence over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries, but it recoalesced under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties into the Holy Roman Empire by 800 (before splitting up into effectively a Frankish kingdom and the Germanic kingdom of the HRE). The Eastern Roman Empire lasted until around 1200, when the Fourth Crusade conquered it instead (a conquest which didn't last, but the Byzantines never recovered and the Ottomans finally put them out of their misery 250 years later). It's worth noting that pretty much all of the people I've cited considered themselves the true heirs of the Roman Empire.
Meanwhile in China, the Han dynasty crashed hard in the early 200s, with three major successor states cropping up. One of these managed to conquer the others, so the successive dynasty was the Jin dynasty. Of course, the Jin last control of most of their territory, which fragmented into the Sixteen Kingdoms, but the entire era is still called the Jin dynasty. After the final collapse of the Jin, the north/south dichotomy continued with the Northern and Southern dynasties, which is again a successive series of powers vying for control eventually coalescing into the Sui dynasty after one wins out, which quickly transitions to the Tang dynasty, the first truly unified China since the fall of the Han dynasty. After about 300 years, the Tang dynasty collapses into a major period of disunity, the next truly unified China again taking 300 years to crop up again.
There's a lot of similarity. The major difference is that Western Europe never reunified into a single unitary state (unless you want to count the extremely short lived Napoleonic Empire and Third Reich). But Western Europe did have a successor state that directly retained the traditions from the Roman Empire (namely, the Byzantines) and could plausibly claim to have no break in continuity (the Byzantines never called themselves anything other than the Roman Empire), and all of the major successor states directly drew inspiration and customs from the Roman Empire, rather like China. The writing system, the state religion, the bureaucratic apparatus, the legal system--all of these are derived from the Roman Empire in Western Europe, just as much as they are derived from the Qin and Han dynasties in China.","created_at":"2019-03-05T05:05:23Z","created_at_i":1551762323,"objectID":"19308225","parent_id":19308011,"story_id":19307759,"story_title":"Studying the demise of historic civilisations","story_url":"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse","updated_at":"2024-09-20T03:48:29Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"yanhangyhy"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["tang","dynasty","never","existed"],"value":"This article still pushes the typical "China bad" narrative, throughout which it attempts to disparage Chinese nationalism.
Take the incident mentioned in the piece: the Xi'an Culture and Tourism Bureau later clarified that no one had actually made such phone calls. The reporter simply cited an unverified online comment without doing any fact-checking.
This is a classic tactic used to smear an opponent\u2014exaggerating their views to an absurd degree to weaponize public disgust against them. In reality, aside from this fabricated "phone call" incident, conspiracy theories claiming the Tang dynasty didn't exist have never received any attention from mainstream media or the general public in China.
Its real-world impact is virtually zero. Following this bizarre logic, the author would be better off reporting on how praise for German Nazism spreads on Chinese social media(but i know CNN dont have the balls)."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["tang","dynasty","never","existed"],"value":"One corner of China\u2019s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["tang","dynasty","never","existed"],"value":"https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/style/china-tang-dynasty-never-existed-hoax-intl-hnk"}},"_tags":["comment","author_yanhangyhy","story_49425819"],"author":"yanhangyhy","children":[49429554],"comment_text":"This article still pushes the typical "China bad" narrative, throughout which it attempts to disparage Chinese nationalism.
Take the incident mentioned in the piece: the Xi'an Culture and Tourism Bureau later clarified that no one had actually made such phone calls. The reporter simply cited an unverified online comment without doing any fact-checking.
This is a classic tactic used to smear an opponent\u2014exaggerating their views to an absurd degree to weaponize public disgust against them. In reality, aside from this fabricated "phone call" incident, conspiracy theories claiming the Tang dynasty didn't exist have never received any attention from mainstream media or the general public in China.
Its real-world impact is virtually zero. Following this bizarre logic, the author would be better off reporting on how praise for German Nazism spreads on Chinese social media(but i know CNN dont have the balls).","created_at":"2026-08-25T02:15:22Z","created_at_i":1787624122,"objectID":"49428333","parent_id":49425819,"story_id":49425819,"story_title":"One corner of China\u2019s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed","story_url":"https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/style/china-tang-dynasty-never-existed-hoax-intl-hnk","updated_at":"2026-08-25T06:03:02Z"}],"hitsPerPage":20,"nbHits":7,"nbPages":1,"page":0,"params":"query=Tang+Dynasty+never+existed&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":20,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"roundTrip":21},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":2,"total":2},"merge":{"mergeLoop":{"prepareNextHit":1,"total":2},"total":3},"total":3},"fetch":{"query":15,"total":16},"total":20},"query":"Tang Dynasty never existed","serverTimeMS":23}