The Hexi dialect of the 12th c. recorded in Tangut literature, such as Fanhan Heshi Zhangzhongzhu, was a Tangut-Chinese language, i.e., an ethnic variant of the ancient Chinese Northwest Dialect. Under the influence of their native languages, non-Chinese people tend to make phonemic alternations, additions and deletions when they speak Chinese. These phonetic variants have nothing to do with diachronic evolution and cannot be brought into the sequence of Chinese phonological development as real forms of dialectal evolution. In researching Ancient (Middle) Chinese on the basis of the Chinese and non-Chinese transcriptions, only by stripping out phonetic variants and by carefully analyzing phonological divergences between Chinese and non-Chinese languages can we restore ancient forms better.
On September 26–27, 2023, the IOM RAS will hold the International Conference “Era of Sergey F. Oldenburg in the Russian Academy of Sciences” dedicated to the 160th anniversary of Academician S.F. Oldenburg (1863–1934).
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