“just say when and i’ll take you to my tardis / who’s the hardest, who’s the hardest”

Circling back to Chinese pronunciation shifts, an example thanks to the Chinese Text Project’s pretty cool dictionary lookup tools. An example reconstruction using, as always, Wang Wei’s “Deer Enclosure.”

Text in simplified characters:

空山不见人，
但闻人语响。
返景入深林，
复照青苔上。

Modern Mandarin pronunciation (hover or click on characters in previous link):

kōng shān bù jiàn rén
dàn wèn rén yǔ xiǎng
fǎn jǐng rù shēn lín
fù zhào qīng tái shàng

(zh is /dj/, q is /ch/, x is /sh/)

Reconstructed Tang pronunciations (click on characters in previous link) based on T’ang Poetic Vocabulary, Stimson (1976) -- I don’t follow what’s up with the intermittent tone marks and probably won’t without the book in question, but this at least gives an example of the range of changes:

kùng shrɛn biət gèn njin
dhɑ̀n miən njin ngiǔ xiɑ̌ng
biæ̌n giæ̌ng njip shim lim
bhiòu jiɛ̀u tseng dhəi zhiɑ̀ng

Character by character relevant literal meanings:

empty | mountain | no | see | person
but | hear | person | talk | sound/echo
return | bright(ness)/shadow | enter | deep | forest
repeat/again | shine/reflect | green | moss | upon/above/rise

That last, in case you want to join in the fun and make your own version. (Though be careful, as 返景 can be read as an idiom meaning the time just before sunset, and all nouns could be singular or plural.) It is, after all, a popular thing to do.

---L.

Subject quote from All Things to All Men, The Cinematic Orchestra feat. Roots Manuva.