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Historical Chinese phonology

Historical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past. As Chinese is written with logographic characters, not alphabetic or syllabary, the methods employed in Historical Chinese phonology differ considerably from those employed in, for example, Indo-European linguistics; reconstruction is more difficult because, unlike Indo-European languages, no phonetic spellings were used.

Chinese is documented over a long period of time, with the earliest oracle bone writings dated to c. 1250 BC. However, since the writing is mostly with logographic characters, which do not directly specify the phonology of the language, reconstruction is in general quite difficult, and depends to a large extent on ancillary sources that more directly document the language's phonology. On the basis of these sources, historical Chinese is divided into the following basic periods:
 * Old Chinese, broadly from about 1250 BC to 25 AD, when the Han dynasty came back to power after the Xin dynasty. More narrowly, reconstructed "Old Chinese" is based on the rhymes of early poetry such as the Shijing and the phonological components of Chinese characters, and is assumed to represent the language of c. 1000-700 BC. Proto-Min developed from Old Chinese.
 * Middle Chinese, broadly from about the 5th century AD (Northern and Southern dynasties, Sui, Tang, Song) through to 12th century AD. More narrowly, reconstructed "Middle Chinese" is usually based on the detailed phonetic evidence of the Qieyun rime dictionary (601 AD), later expanded into "Guangyun". The Qieyun describes a compromise between the northern and southern varieties and such rhyming dictionaries were essential to write and read aloud poetry with a rhyming pattern.
 * Modern varieties, from about the 13th century AD (beginning of the Yuan dynasty, in which Early Mandarin was developed) to the present. Most modern varieties appear to have split off from a Late Middle Chinese koine of about 1000 AD (although some remnants of earlier periods are still present, ex. stops without release at the end of the syllable in Hakka and Yue).

Overview
Middle Chinese had a structure much like many modern varieties, with largely monosyllabic words, little or no derivational morphology, four tone-classes (though three phonemic tones), and a syllable structure consisting of initial consonant, glide, main vowel and final consonant, with a large number of initial consonants and a fairly small number of final consonants. Not counting the glide, no clusters could occur at the beginning or end of a syllable.

Old Chinese, on the other hand, had a significantly different structure. Most scholars have concluded that there were no tones, a lesser imbalance between possible initial and final consonants, and a significant number of initial and final clusters. There was a well-developed system of derivational and possibly inflectional morphology, formed using consonants added onto the beginning or end of a syllable. This system is similar to the system reconstructed for Proto-Sino-Tibetan and still visible, for example, in the written Tibetan language; it is also largely similar to the system that occurs in the more conservative Mon–Khmer languages, such as modern Khmer (Cambodian).

The main changes leading to the modern varieties have been a reduction in the number of consonants and vowels and a corresponding increase in the number of tones (typically through a pan-East-Asiatic tone split that doubled the number of tones while eliminating the distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants). This has led to a gradual decrease in the number of possible syllables. In Standard Mandarin, this has progressed to a farther extent than elsewhere, with only about 1,200 possible syllables. The result, in Mandarin especially, has been the proliferation of the number of two-syllable compound words, which have steadily replaced former monosyllabic words, to the extent that the majority of words in Standard Mandarin are now composed of two syllables.

Periodization of Chinese
The terms "Old Chinese" and "Middle Chinese" refer to long periods of time in and of themselves, during which significant changes occurred. Although there is no standard system for subdividing these periods, the following is an approximate chronology leading from the oldest writings in the oracle bone script up through modern Standard Mandarin:

 * 1) Axel Schuessler uses the term Early Zhou Chinese to refer to the language from the earliest records down to the end of the Western Zhou period (c. 1250 to 771 BC).
 * 2) W. A. C. H. Dobson uses the term Early Archaic Chinese to refer to the same period ("10th to 9th century BC"), although Schuessler suggests that the term should refer to a slightly later period.
 * 3) Dobson uses the term Late Archaic Chinese to refer to the "4th to 3rd century BC"; that is, the period near the beginning of the Han dynasty.
 * 4) Late Han Chinese (LHC) is c. 200 AD. This is around the time that Min Chinese varieties diverged from the others.
 * 5) Old Northwest Chinese (ONWC), c. 400 AD, is a reconstruction by Weldon South Coblin of the language of the northwestern Chinese provinces of Gansu and Shaanxi that is immediately ancestral to a set of northwestern dialects documented by various early Tang dynasty authors.
 * 6) Early Middle Chinese (EMC), c. 600 AD, is the language of the Qieyun rime dictionary, the first stage for which we have direct and detailed phonetic evidence. This evidence is not enough by itself to directly determine the sound system of the language, however, as it only subdivides characters into an initial consonant and non-initial portion, without further decomposing the latter into phonemes.
 * 7) Late Middle Chinese (LMC), c. 1000 AD, is the native language of the authors of the Yunjing rime table and the oldest stage that can be reconstructed from modern non-Min varieties by the comparative method.
 * 8) Early Mandarin, c. 1300 AD (sometimes specifically given as 1269–1455. The Yuan dynasty conquered the whole of China in 1279 and was overpowered by the Ming dynasty in 1368), was the language inferred in the 'Phags-pa script, the first alphabetic writing system for Chinese. It is also documented in the Zhōngyuán Yīnyùn (中原音韻 "Sounds and Rhymes of the Central Plains", an opera manual of 1324 AD written by Zhou Deqing).
 * 9) Middle Mandarin, up through c. 1800 (sometimes specifically given as 1455–1795), documented in numerous Chinese, Korean and European sources. Among these are Chinese-Korean pedagogical texts such as Hongmu Chôngyun Yôkhun (1455) and Sasông T’onghae (1517); the Portuguese-Chinese dictionary (1583–1588) of the Christian missionaries Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri; a dictionary by a friar, Basilio Brollo (1692-1694), also known as Basile da Glemona, a grammar of Mandarin by Francisco Varo (1703) and Chinese rhyme manuals such as the Yunlüe Huitong (1642).
 * 10) Modern Standard Chinese, a standardized form of the dialect of Beijing that is little changed from the 19th century. It was promulgated during the Republic of China in 1932. Today, it is the standard variety in the PRC, founded by Mao Zedong in 1949.

Chinese native phonological traditions
A native tradition of Chinese phonology developed in the Middle Chinese period. Chinese linguists had long compiled dictionaries and attempted to identify the pronunciation of difficult characters by specifying homophone characters. During the early centuries AD, however, the more advanced method of fanqie was developed, which allowed the pronunciation of any syllable to be specified unambiguously by using one character to indicate the initial consonant and another to indicate the remainder. By the sixth century AD, systematic attempts were made to compile lists of all characters and specify their pronunciation by way of fanqie, culminating in rime dictionaries such as the Qieyun (601 AD).

During the next few centuries, the increasing influence of Buddhism and Buddhist scholars brought Chinese linguists in touch with the tradition of Sanskrit grammar, which included a highly advanced understanding of phonology and phonetics, including a system of analyzing sounds by distinctive features, such as place of articulation and type of phonation. This led to rime tables such as the Yunjing (c. 1150 AD), a sophisticated analysis of the sound system of the Qieyun.

During the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), scholars such as Duan Yucai diligently studied the sound system of Middle and Old Chinese. Through careful examination of rime tables, rime dictionaries and patterns of rhyming among poets of various eras, these scholars were able to work out the system of categories of rhymes in Old Chinese, and discover additional Middle Chinese categories that had previously been overlooked. However, progress in Chinese linguistics was seriously hampered by the lack of any concept of a phoneme — i.e. a basic unit of sound, including vowels and vowel-like segments as well as consonants. This made it impossible to go beyond determination of systems of rhyming categories to reconstruction of the actual sounds involved.

In some ways, the lack of native Chinese development of the concept of a unit of sound is surprising, as it had already been developed by Sanskrit grammarians such as Pāṇini by the 4th century BC at the latest, and the phonological analysis of the Yunjing shows a close familiarity with the tradition of Sanskrit grammar. Furthermore, some non-Chinese writing systems within the Chinese cultural orbit, such as the Korean script and especially the Tibetan script, were developed under the close influence of Indian writing systems and have the concept of phoneme directly embedded in them. (Furthermore, the 'Phags-pa script, an alphabetic script of Tibetan origin, had been used to write Chinese itself during the Mongolian Yuan dynasty, c. 1270–1360, although it later fell out of use.) It seems likely, however, that
 * 1) The strong influence and long tradition of Chinese writing, which included no concept of an alphabet and always treated the rhyming part of a syllable as a single unit, made it difficult to independently develop the concept of a unit of sound.
 * 2) Lack of knowledge of Sanskrit by most Chinese scholars precluded direct reading of the original works on Sanskrit grammar.
 * 3) Cultural attitudes that treated Koreans, Tibetans, Mongolians and most other foreigners as "barbarians" made it difficult for scientific knowledge from these cultures to diffuse into China.

Modern methods of reconstruction
As a result, the first reconstructions of the actual sound systems of Old and Middle Chinese were only done in the early 20th century, by Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren. Armed with his knowledge of Western historical linguistics, he performed field work in China between 1910 and 1912, creating a list of 3,100 Chinese characters and collecting phonological data on the pronunciation of these characters in 19 Mandarin dialects as well as the dialects of Shanghai (Wu), Fuzhou (Eastern Min), and Guangdong (Cantonese). He combined this with the Sino-Japanese and Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations as well as previously published material on nine other dialects, along with the fanqie analysis of the Guangyun rime dictionary (a later version of the Qieyun of 601 AD). In 1915, he published his reconstruction of Middle Chinese, which underlies in one form or another all subsequent reconstructions. Walter Simon and Henri Maspero also made great contributions in the field during the early days of its development. Karlgren himself had no direct access to the Qieyun, which was thought lost; however, fragments of the Qieyun were discovered in the Dunhuang Caves in the 1930s, and a nearly complete copy was discovered in 1947 in the Palace Museum.

Karlgren was also instrumental in early reconstruction of Old Chinese. His early work on Middle Chinese made various suggestions about Old Chinese, and a detailed reconstruction appeared in Grammata Serica (1940), a dictionary of Middle and Old Chinese reconstructions. An expanded version, Grammata Serica Recensa, was published in 1957 and is still a commonly cited source.

The reconstruction of Middle Chinese draws its data (in approximate order of importance) from:

 * Rime dictionaries and rime tables of the Middle Chinese era, such as the Qieyun (601 AD) and Yunjing (c. 1150 AD).
 * Modern Chinese speaking variants such as Yue, Hakka, Mandarin, Min, Wu etc.
 * Sino-Xenic data — Chinese loanwords borrowed in large numbers into Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean, especially during the period of 500–1000 AD. This large-scale borrowing led to the so-called Sino-Vietnamese, Sino-Japanese and Sino-Korean vocabularies of these languages.
 * Other early cases of Chinese words borrowed into foreign languages or transcribed in foreign sources, e.g. Sanskrit works in India.
 * Early cases of transliteration of foreign words from other languages such as Sanskrit and Tibetan into Chinese.
 * Chinese written in the 'Phags-pa script, a brief period (c. 1270–1360) when Chinese was written in an alphabetic script.
 * Transcriptions of Chinese by foreigners, especially the Hangul transcriptions of Koreans such as Sin Sukchu (15th century) and works by various Christian missionaries and other Westerners, the oldest of which is Matteo Ricci's Portuguese–Chinese dictionary of 1583–1588. (Although these transcriptions, as well as the 'Phags-pa evidence, are significant in providing extensive documentation of earlier forms of Mandarin Chinese, their importance for reconstructing Middle Chinese pales in comparison with the much greater breadth provided by the pronunciation of Chinese variants and Sino-Xenic languages, despite their later attestation.)

Karlgren suggested that the Middle Chinese documented in the Qieyun was a live language of the Sui-Tang period. Today, with direct access to the Qieyun, this notion has been replaced by the view that the sound system in the Qieyun represents (or proposes) a literate reading adopted by the literate class of the period throughout the country, not any live language that once existed. For example, in some cases a former three-way distinction A, B, C among initials or finals gave way to a situation where one dialect group of the Qieyun period merged AB vs. C, while another group merged A vs. BC. In these cases, the Qieyun specifies A, B, C as all distinct, even though no living dialect of the time period made such a three-way distinction, and any earlier dialect that did make this distinction would have differed in other ways from the Qieyun system.

The reconstruction of Old Chinese is more controversial than that of Middle Chinese since it has to be extrapolated from the Middle Chinese data. Phonological information concerning Old Chinese is chiefly gained from:

 * The rhymed texts written before the Qin dynasty, chiefly the Shijing, the earliest anthology of Chinese poetry.
 * The idea that characters sharing the same phonetic component were homophones or near-homophones when the characters were first created.
 * Comparison of Old Chinese with other Sino-Tibetan dialects.

Old Chinese phonology
There are disagreements over exactly what the Old Chinese (OC) syllable looked like. The following is an approximate consensus, based on the system of William Baxter and (earlier) Li Fang-Kuei:
 * 1) A syllable consisted of an initial consonant, an optional medial glide (but no  or ), a main vowel, an optional final (coda) consonant, and an optional post-final consonant  or . There were also various pre-initial consonants. (In recent systems, Baxter also constructs a distinction between "tightly bound" pre-initials  and "loosely bound" pre-initials . The tightly bound pre-initials interact in complex ways with the initial to produce EMC initials, but the loosely bound pre-initials mostly just disappear. Their presence, however, is revealed by the use of a "phonetic complement" with the corresponding tightly bound pre-initial in their character, and sometimes by early borrowings into other languages, especially Hmong–Mien languages and Tai languages.) Pre-initial and post-final consonants were frequently used in morphological derivation.
 * 2) There was no MC-style tone, but there was a distinction of some sort between type-A and type-B syllables. Depending on the linguist, the distinction is variously thought to reflect either presence or absence of prefixes, an accentual or length distinction on the main vowel, or some sort of register distinction (e.g. pharyngealization of the initial consonant in type-A syllables). These different reconstructions may not be mutually exclusive (e.g. an earlier prefix distinction may have developed into a later register distinction).
 * 3) Compared with EMC, there were no palatal or retroflex consonants, but there were labiovelar consonants (e.g. ). Baxter also reconstructs voiceless resonants, e.g.,.
 * 4) There were on the order of six main vowels:, , , , , (or ).
 * 5) The system of final (coda) consonants was similar to EMC; however, there was no . Baxter also reconstructs final, later becoming.

Palatalisation of velar initials
William H. Baxter pointed out that some of the words that were reconstructed with Middle Chinese palatal initials were perhaps words that had velar initials in Old Chinese. For example, Baxter indicated that 熱, reconstructed as nyet in Middle Chinese, was perhaps pronounced as ngjet in Old Chinese. He noted the distinction between 支 (tsye), which had a MC palatal initial, and 技, which had a velar initial in MC (gjeX, III), despite their common phonetic component. Some modern Min and Hakka varieties nonetheless retain velar initials in both. The two are reconstructed by Baxter to be kje and grjeʔ respectively in Old Chinese. Baxter posited that the medial -rj- cluster had blocked palatalisation.

Lenition of OC /ɡ/
The voiced velar plosive, *, was lenited to a voiced fricative (*) during this development from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese. According to Laurent Sagart, this change is reflected when the Old Chinese plosive occurred in type A syllables. This is supported by Baxter's observation that modern Min dialects show a difference in pronunciation between 厚 and 後, both of which belong to the Middle Chinese 匣 initial (reconstructed as *). For the first character, the Fuzhou dialect, Amoy Hokkien and the Teochew dialect, show pronunciations with a velar plosive (*). This pronunciation is consistent with an earlier pronunciation with a velar plosive, most likely the Old Chinese *. The second character is pronounced by these dialects with a null initial, possibly reflecting a voiced laryngeal in Old Chinese. The OC * remained intact in Type B syllables, which correspond to Division III Middle Chinese words.

Retroflex initials
The loss of the reconstructed OC medial "r", or the r-infix in Sagart's reconstruction, had not only influenced vowel quality in Middle Chinese but had also caused the retroflexion of coronal consonants.

Sonorant fortition
Both Baxter and Sagart have pointed out that Old Chinese had a series of voiceless sonorants, which typically do not occur in most modern varieties. These voiceless sonorants are,  ,  ,  ,  , and possibly. Their reflexes in Middle Chinese are postulated to be:

Additionally, the OC lateral consonant is shown to have fortified to a coronal plosive  in Type A syllables. Meanwhile, it developed into in Type B syllables, which palatalised in Middle Chinese. Sagart pointed out, however, that these changes are not true if the lateral is preceded by a reconstructed prefix. This position, whereby OC underwent fortition to become a plosive, is upheld by Baxter. Baxter pointed out xiesheng contacts between plosive series, sibilants and MC, and made the following reconstructions:

Note that these reconstructions included voiceless sonorants, of which the developments have been consistent with their fortition and reflexes.

According to Sagart, this fortition was impeded if the lateral was preceded by an unspecified consonant or minor syllable. He reconstructs 林 as, yielding MC. Furthermore, MC was said to have derived from an OC.

Medials and finals
The following are the main developments that produced Early Middle Chinese (EMC) from Old Chinese (OC):
 * Type-B syllables developed a glide. This glide combined with a previous coronal consonant to produce new palatal consonants. It also sometimes turned a preceding velar or laryngeal into a palatal sibilant and/or raised a following main vowel. (Contrarily, type-A syllables often lowered a following main vowel, with a high vowel diphthongizing, e.g.  becoming .)
 * The glide eventually disappeared, but before doing this it turned a previous coronal consonant into a retroflex consonant, and fronted (and often centralized) a following main vowel.
 * Changes to final consonants: became ;  dropped after ;  dropped before ;  before  became  (which remained, even after ).
 * Tones developed from the former suffixes (post-final consonants), with MC tone 3 ("departing") developing from, tone 2 ("rising") developing from , and tone 1 ("level") from other syllables. As the suffixes were part of the derivational morphology of OC, this often produced MC tonal variation, either in a single word or in semantically related words.
 * Back vowels and, when followed by a coronal consonant , broke into  plus a front vowel.
 * Labiovelar initials were reanalyzed as a velar followed a glide, which merged with  from breaking of  and.
 * The main vowel developed in various complicated ways, depending on the surrounding sounds. For example, in type-A syllables, according to Baxter's reconstruction, OC became  after ; otherwise,  after coronal initials,  after velar initials, and  after labial initials. In type-B syllables, however, OC  became  after  or coronal initial, but  otherwise.

Note that OC type-B syllables correspond closely to division-III, and (in Baxter's reconstruction at least) to EMC syllables with or.

From Early Middle Chinese to Late Middle Chinese
To a large degree, Late Middle Chinese (LMC) of c. 1000 AD can be viewed as the direct ancestor of all Chinese varieties except Min Chinese; in other words, attempting to reconstruct the parent language of all varieties excluding Min leads no farther back than LMC. See below for more information. Exactly which changes occurred between EMC and LMC depends on whose system of EMC and/or LMC reconstruction is used. In the following, Baxter's EMC reconstruction is compared to Pulleyblank's LMC reconstruction. To the extent that these two systems reflect reality, they may be significantly farther apart than the 400 or so years normally given between EMC and LMC, since Baxter's EMC system was designed to harmonize with Old Chinese while Pulleyblank's LMC system was designed to harmonize with later Mandarin developments. Furthermore, Baxter considers all the distinctions of the Qieyun to be real, while many of them are clearly anachronisms that no longer applied to any living form of the language in 600 AD. Finally, some of the resulting "changes" may not be actual changes at all so much as conceptual differences in the way the systems have been reconstructed; these are noted below.

Changes mostly involve initials, medials, and main vowels.
 * The class of EMC palatals is lost, with palatal sibilants becoming retroflex sibilants and the palatal nasal becoming a new phoneme.
 * A new class of labiodentals emerges, from EMC labials followed by and an EMC back vowel.
 * EMC complex medial becomes , producing a six-way medial distinction between none, , , , , . The phonemic glides  and  are vocalic  and  before short vowels  and , but semivocalic  and  before long vowel.
 * The eight-way EMC distinction in main vowels is significantly modified, developing into a system with high vowels, , and (marginally) , and non-high vowels , , . However, this is best analyzed as a system with a four-way main vowel distinction between no vowel and the three phonemic vowels , , ; high vowels are then analyzed as phonemically consisting of a medial and no main vowel ( is phonemically a syllable containing only a bare consonant, with no medial and no main vowel).
 * High front medials/main vowels and  are lost after EMC retroflex sibilants, prior to merging with palatals; contrarily, a  sometimes appears after guttural consonants.

Few changes to final consonants occur; the main ones are the loss of after a high vowel, the disappearance of  (which might or might not be reckoned as a final consonant) in the rhyme, and (potentially) the appearance of  and  (which are suspect in various ways; see below).

The tones do not change phonemically. However, allophonically they evidently split into a higher-pitched allophone in syllables with voiceless initials, and a lower-pitched allophone in syllables with voiced initials. All modern Chinese varieties reflect such a split, which produces a new set of phonemic tones in most varieties due to later loss of voicing distinctions.

The following changes are in approximate order.

Labiodentalization
Early Middle Chinese (EMC) labials become Late Middle Chinese (LMC) labiodentals (, possibly from earlier affricates) in certain circumstances involving a following glide. When this happens, the glide disappears. Using Baxter's reconstruction, the triggering circumstances can be expressed simply as whenever a labial is followed by a glide and the main vowel is a back vowel; other reconstructions word the rule differently. According to Baxter, however, labiodentalization might have occurred independently of each other in different areas. For example, some variants retain OC /m/ before the glide, while in other variants, it had developed into a labiodental initial (微): compare Cantonese 文 man4 and Mandarin 文 wén.

Vowel changes and mergers
In approximate order:

 * a. Some early changes
 * 1)  (without medial ) becomes  after labial, velar and glottal consonants,  elsewhere. (Along with certain later changes, this means that, synchronically, an LMC speaker cannot distinguish original Division IV syllables from original III-4 chongniu syllables; likewise for Division III vs. III-3 chongniu. This explains why these chongniu pairs end up in grades 3 and 4, respectively.) A change of this sort occurs in all modern reconstructions of EMC and LMC, and is responsible for the creation of Division IV.
 * 2)  and  after a non-high front vowel  become  and  (often viewed as palatalized final consonants). This may not be a real change; Pulleyblank's EMC system already includes  and, whereas they are not present in any modern dialect. The most direct evidence for these sounds comes from Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, which was borrowed from LMC and does reflect the sounds. In Pulleyblank's LMC system,  only occurs in the rhymes  and , which contrast with  and ; likewise for . ( and  do not contrast before velar finals, except possibly after EMC retroflex sibilants.) These contrasts would be reflected in some other way in a system without  and.
 * 3) The sequence  merges into . In some dialects, however, it instead remains separate (perhaps in the form, not otherwise occurring in Baxter's system). According to Abraham Y.S. Chan, the former change was characteristic of the Luoyang dialect, while the latter reflected the Jinling dialect. The distinction between the two surfaces in Standard Mandarin as a respective distinction between ai and ya, or pai/pei and pa.

 * b. Mergers of high-front finals
 * 1) EMC finals, , , merge into ; likewise  (which occurs before  and ) becomes.
 * 2) The hekou equivalents of the above (with additional medial ) become.
 * 3) The III-4 chongniu equivalents of both of the above become and, respectively.

 * c. Changes involving high back vowels, mostly generating
 * 1) EMC final becomes ; likewise,  becomes . (Possibly not a real change.)
 * 2) The EMC sequence becomes, and  becomes.
 * 3) All remaining, except in the sequences and , become.
 * 4) All non-final become, and  become.

 * d. Changes involving non-high vowels
 * 1) When there is no medial, remaining and  become.
 * 2) All remaining, , , become.

 * e. Changes involving medials
 * 1) Non-final and  become, while  become.
 * 2) The medials and  merge into a single phoneme, with  occurring before  and, and  elsewhere (before  and high vowels). Medial  and  merge in the same way.

 * f. Medial and similar changes triggered by specific initials
 * 1) appears between a guttural consonant (velar or laryngeal) and a directly following . This sets the stage for palatalized syllables in Standard Mandarin such as jia and xian.
 * 2) A final directly following a dental sibilant becomes  (presumably ).
 * 3) After an EMC retroflex sibilant, a directly following high-front vowel or glide ( or, along with front-rounded or , if reconstructed) is removed, specifically:
 * 4) A glide is lost.
 * 5) A main vowel becomes  if non-final.
 * 6) A main vowel becomes  (presumably ) if final.
 * 7) If high front-rounded vocalics are reconstructed, they unround ( ->, -> ).

Late changes to initial consonants

 * EMC palatals become retroflex, with palatal sibilants merging with retroflex sibilants and palatal becoming a new phoneme  (still reflected as such in Standard Mandarin).
 * Voiced consonants are thought to have become breathy voiced. This is a non-phonemic change; it is postulated to account for the breathy-voiced consonants still present in Wu Chinese, and the common outcome elsewhere of originally voiced consonants as unvoiced aspirates. Karlgren reconstructed breathy voicing for EMC as well, but this is no longer thought to be the case due to lack of any evidence for it in borrowings to or from EMC (especially involving Sanskrit and Middle Indic languages, which had a distinction between normally voiced and breathy-voiced consonants). This may have occurred to differing extents in different places:
 * Among the two Chinese varieties that have not merged voiced and unvoiced consonants, Wu reflects the EMC voiced consonants as breathy voiced, but Old Xiang reflects them as normally voiced.
 * Gan and Hakka reflect all EMC voiced consonants as unvoiced aspirates, but many others (e.g. Mandarin) only have such aspirated consonants in syllables within the yang ping tone, the light-level tone. Similarly, many words in Hokkien Min that are read with the yang ping tone are unaspirated, developing from Old Chinese and Middle Chinese voiced initials. Some words have aspirated readings, however, which led some linguists to believe that there may be a voiced aspirated series in the Proto-Min language, which had branched off from Old Chinese before it developed into Middle Chinese.

Initials

 * Voiced stops and sibilants were devoiced; the stops became aspirated in syllables with tone 1 and unaspirated otherwise.
 * Retroflex stops merged into retroflex affricates.
 * Sonorants: retroflex nasal merged into alveolar nasal;, formerly palatal nasal in EMC, became or sometimes the syllable er; velar nasal was dropped.
 * Before high front vowel or glide, velars ("back-tooth" stops and "throat" fricatives) and alveolar sibilants palatalized and merged as a new series of alveolo-palatal sibilants.
 * The glottal stop was dropped; before a high front glide, the voiced velar fricative  was dropped.
 * Labiodentals:, devoiced, merged into ; became . (LMC labiodentals resulted from EMC labials preceding  + back vowel.)

The following table illustrates the evolution of initials from Early Middle Chinese, through Late Middle Chinese, to Standard Mandarin.

Finals
In general, Mandarin preserves the LMC system of medials and main vowels fairly well (better than most other varieties) but drastically reduces the system of codas (final consonants). The systematic changes to medials and main vowels are loss of the chongniu distinctions i/ji and y/jy (which occur in all modern varieties) and loss of the distinction between and. All final stop consonants are lost, and final nasals are reduced to a distinction between and.

The exact changes involving finals are somewhat complex and not always predictable, in that in many circumstances there are multiple possible outcomes. The following is a basic summary; more information can be found in the table of EMC finals in Middle Chinese.

Changes to medials:
 * LMC medial classes and  merge, losing the ; likewise for  and.
 * LMC front medials and  (and corresponding main vowels) are lost after retroflex consonants. The operation of this change is exactly as for the similar change that occurred after EMC retroflexes. The difference between EMC retroflex and palatal sibilants is sometimes reflected in Mandarin, for example between she (EMC retroflex) and shi (EMC palatal).
 * LMC medial is lost after labials, and  unrounds to.
 * LMC medial is sometimes lost after  and.
 * Various other changes occur after particular initials.

Changes to main vowels:
 * Long vowel shortens.
 * Various other complex changes; see Middle Chinese.

Changes to codas:
 * LMC coda becomes.
 * LMC stop codas are dropped, with  sometimes becoming  and.
 * LMC complex codas and  become simple codas; likewise for  and, but often with effects on the preceding vowel.

Tones
A tone split occurs as a result of the loss of the voicing distinction in initial consonants. The split tones then merge back together except for Middle Chinese tone 1; hence Middle Chinese tones 1,2,3 become Mandarin tones 1,2,3,4. (Some syllables with original Mandarin tone 3 move to tone 4; see below.) Syllables with a final stop consonant, originally toneless, get assigned to one of the four modern tones; for syllables with Middle Chinese unvoiced initials, this happens in a completely random fashion.

The specific relationship between Middle Chinese and modern tones:

 * V− = unvoiced initial consonant (全清 or 次清 )
 * L = sonorant initial consonant (次濁 )
 * V+ = voiced initial consonant (not sonorant) (全濁 )

Branching off of the modern varieties
Most modern Chinese varieties can be viewed as descendants of Late Middle Chinese (LMC) of c. 1000 AD. For example, all modern varieties other than Min Chinese have labiodental fricatives (e.g. ), a change that occurred after Early Middle Chinese (EMC) of c. 600 AD. In fact, some post-LMC changes are reflected in all modern varieties, such as the loss of the chongniu distinction (between e.g. and, using Edwin Pulleyblank's transcription). Other changes occurring in most modern varieties, such as the loss of initial voiced obstruents and corresponding tone split, are areal changes that spread across existing dialects; possibly the loss of chongniu distinctions can be viewed in the same way.

Min Chinese, on the other hand, is known to have branched off even before Early Middle Chinese (EMC) of c. 600 AD. Not only does it not reflect the development of labiodental fricatives or other LMC-specific changes, but a number of features already present in EMC appear never developed. An example is the series of retroflex stops in EMC, which developed from earlier alveolar stops followed by, and which later merged with retroflex sibilants. In Min, the corresponding words still have alveolar stops. This difference can be seen in the words for "tea" borrowed into various other languages: For example, Spanish te, English tea vs. Portuguese chá, English chai, reflecting the Amoy (Southern Min) vs. Standard Mandarin.

In the case of distinctions that appear to have never developed in Min, it could be argued that the ancestral language did in fact have these distinctions, but they later disappeared. For example, it could be argued that Min varieties descend from a Middle Chinese dialect where retroflex stops merged back into alveolar stops instead of merging with retroflex sibilants. However, this argument cannot be made if there are distinctions in Min that do not appear in EMC (and which reflect ancient features going back to Old Chinese or – ultimately – even Proto-Sino-Tibetan, so that they cannot be explained as secondary developments), and this does indeed appear to be the case. In particular, Proto-Min (the reconstructed ancestor of the Min varieties) appears to have had six series of stops corresponding to the three series (unvoiced, unvoiced aspirated, voiced) of Middle Chinese. The additional three series are voiced aspirated (or breathy voiced), unvoiced "softened", and voiced "softened".

Evidence for the voiced aspirated stops comes from tonal distinctions among the stops. When voiced stops became unvoiced in most varieties and triggered a tone split, words with these stops moved into new lowered (so-called yang) tone classes, while words with unvoiced stops appeared in raised (so-called yin) tone classes. The result is that the yin classes have words with both aspirated and unaspirated stops, while the yang classes have only one of the two, depending on how the formerly voiced stops developed. Min varieties, however, have both kinds of words in yang classes as well as yin classes. This has caused scholars to reconstruct voiced aspirates (probably realized as breathy voiced consonants) in Proto-Min, which develop into unvoiced aspirates in yang-class words.

In addition, in some Min varieties, some words with EMC stops are reflected with stops while others are reflected with "softened" consonants, typically voiced fricatives or approximants. Such "softened stops" occur in both yin and yang classes, suggesting that Proto-Min had both unvoiced and voiced "softened stops". Presumably "softened stops" were actually fricatives of some sort, but it is unclear exactly what they were.

Scholars generally assume that these additional Proto-Min sounds reflect distinctions in Old Chinese that vanished in Early Middle Chinese but remained in Proto-Min. Until recently, no reconstructions of Old Chinese specifically accounted for the Proto-Min distinctions, but the recent reconstruction of William Baxter and Laurent Sagart accounts for both voiced aspirates and softened stops. According to them, voiced aspirates reflect Old Chinese stops in words with particular consonant prefixes, while softened stops reflect Old Chinese stops in words with a minor syllable prefix, so that the stop occurred between vowels. The postulated development of the softened stops is very similar to the development of voiced fricatives in Vietnamese, which likewise occur in both yin and yang varieties and are reconstructed as developing from words with minor syllables.

title: Historical Chinese phonology


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Baiyue

The Baiyue, Hundred Yue, or simply Yue, were various ethnic groups who inhabited the regions of Southern China and Northern Vietnam during the 1st millennium BC and 1st millennium AD. They were known for their short hair, body tattoos, fine swords, and naval prowess.

During the Warring States period, the word "Yue" referred to the state of Yue in Zhejiang. The later kingdoms of Minyue in Fujian and Nanyue in Guangdong were both considered Yue states. During the Zhou and Han dynasties, the Yue lived in a vast territory from Jiangsu to Yunnan, while Barlow (1997:2) indicates that the Luoyue occupied the southwest Guangxi and northern Vietnam. The Book of Han describes the various Yue tribes and peoples can be found from the regions of Kuaiji to Jiaozhi.

The Yue tribes were gradually displaced or assimilated into Chinese culture as the Han empire expanded into what is now Southern China and Northern Vietnam. Many modern southern Chinese dialects bear traces of substrate languages originally spoken by the ancient Yue. Variations of the name are still used for the name of modern Vietnam, in Zhejiang-related names including Yue opera, the Yue Chinese language, and in the abbreviation for Guangdong.

Names
The modern term "Yue" (Early Middle Chinese: ) comes from Old Chinese. It was first written using the pictograph for an axe (a homophone), in oracle bone and bronze inscriptions of the late Shang dynasty (c. 1200 BC), and later as. At that time it referred to a people or chieftain to the northwest of the Shang. In the early 8th century BC, a tribe on the middle Yangtze were called the Yangyue, a term later used for peoples further south. Between the 7th and 4th centuries BC "Yue" referred to the state of Yue in the lower Yangtze basin and its people. According to Ye Wenxian, as cited by Wan, the ethnonym of the Yuefang in northwestern China is not associated with that of the Baiyue in southeastern China.

The term Baiyue first appears in the Lüshi Chunqiu, compiled around 239 BC. It was later used as a collective term for many non-Huaxia/Han Chinese populations of Southern China and Northern Vietnam.

Ancient texts mention a number of Yue states or groups. Most of these names survived into early imperial times:

Yuyue
During the early Zhou dynasty, the Chinese came into contact with a people known as the Yuyue, but it is uncertain if they had any connection with the later Yue.

Wu and Yue
From the 9th century BC, two northern Yue tribes on the southeastern coastline of China, the Gouwu and Yuyue, came under the cultural influence of their northern Chinese neighbours. These two peoples were based in the areas of what is now southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, respectively. Traditional accounts attribute the cultural exchange to Taibo, a Zhou dynasty prince who had self-exiled to the south. During the Spring and Autumn period, the Gouwu founded the state of Wu and the Yuyue the state of Yue. The Wu and Yue peoples hated each other and had an intense rivalry but were indistinguishable from each other to the other Chinese states. It is suggested in some sources that their distinctive appearance made them victims of discrimination abroad.

The northern Wu eventually became the more sinicized of the two states. The royal family of Wu claimed descent from King Wen of Zhou as the founder of their dynasty. King Fuchai of Wu made every effort to assert this claim and was the source of much contention among his contemporaries. Some scholars believe the Wu royalty may have been Chinese and ethnically distinct from the people they ruled. The recorded history of Wu began with King Shoumeng ((r. 585 – 561 BC)). He was succeeded in succession by his sons King Zhufan ((r. 560 – 548 BC)), King Yuji ((r. 547 – 531 BC)), and King Yumei ((r. 530 – 527 BC)). The brothers all agreed to exclude their sons from the line of succession and to eventually pass the throne to their youngest brother, Prince Jizha, but when Yumei died, a succession crisis erupted which saw his son King Liao taking the throne. Not much is known about their reigns as Yue history largely concentrates on the last two Wu kings, Helü of Wu, who killed his cousin Liao, and his son Fuchai of Wu.

Records for the southern state of Yue begin with the reign of King Yunchang (d. 497 BC). According to the Records of the Grand Historian, the Yue kings were descended from Shao Kang of the Xia dynasty. According to another source, the kings of Yue were related to the royal family of Chu. Other sources simply name the Yue ruling family as the house of Zou. There is no scholarly consensus on the origin of the Yue or their royalty.

Wu and Yue spent much of the time at war with each other, during which Yue gained a fearsome reputation for its martial valour:

Almost nothing is known about the organizational structure of the Wu and Yue states. Wu records only mention its ministers and kings while Yue records only mention its kings, and of these kings only Goujian's life is recorded in any appreciable detail. Goujian's descendants are listed but aside from their succession of each other until 330 BC, when Yue was conquered by Chu, nothing else about them is known. Therefore, the lower echelons of Wu–Yue society remain shrouded in mystery, appearing only in reference to their strange clothing, tattoos, and short hair by northern Chinese states. After the fall of Yue, the ruling family moved south to what is now Fujian and established the kingdom of Minyue. There they stayed, outside the reach of Chinese history until the end of the Warring States period and the rise of the Qin dynasty.

In 512 BC, Wu launched a large expedition against the large state of Chu, based in the Middle Yangtze River. A similar campaign in 506 succeeded in sacking the Chu capital Ying. Also in that year, war broke out between Wu and Yue and continued with breaks for the next three decades. Wu campaigns against other states such as Jin and Qi are also mentioned. In 473, King Goujian of Yue finally conquered Wu and was acknowledged by the northern states of Qi and Jin. In 333, Yue was in turn conquered by Chu.

Qin dynasty

After the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang, the former Wu and Yue states were absorbed into the nascent Qin empire. The Qin armies also advanced south along the Xiang River to modern Guangdong and set up commanderies along the main communication routes. Motivated by the region's vast land and valuable exotic products, Emperor Qin Shi Huang is said to have sent half a million troops divided into five armies to conquer the lands of the Yue. The Yue defeated the first attack by Qin troops and killed the Qin commander. A passage from Huainanzi of Liu An quoted by Keith Taylor (1991:18) describing the Qin defeat as follows: "The Yue fled into the depths of the mountains and forests, and it was not possible to fight them. The soldiers were kept in the garrisons to watch over abandoned territories. This went on for a long time, and the soldiers went weary. Then the Yue went out and attacked; the Ch'in (Qin) soldiers suffered a great defeat. Subsequently, convicts were sent to hold the garrisons against the Yue."

Afterwards, Qin Shi Huang sent reinforcements to defend against the Yue. In 214 BC, Qin Shi Huang ordered the construction of the Lingqu Canal, which linked the north and south so that reinforcements could be transported to modern Guangdong, Guangxi and northern Vietnam, which were subjugated and reorganized into three prefectures within the Qin empire. Qin Shi Huang imposed sinicisation by sending a large number of Chinese military agricultural colonists to what are now eastern Guangxi and western Guangdong.

Minyue and Dong'ou
When the Qin fell in 206 BC, the hegemon-king Xiang Yu did not make Zou Wuzhu and Zou Yao kings. For this reason they refused to support him and instead joined Liu Bang in attacking Xiang Yu. When Liu Bang won the war in 202 BC, he made Zou Wuzhu king of Minyue; in 192, Zou Yao was made the king of Dong'ou. Both Minyue and Dong'ou claimed descent from Goujian.

In 154, Liu Pi, the King of Wu, revolted against the Han and tried to persuade Minyue and Dong'ou to join him. The king of Minyue refused but Dong'ou sided with the rebels. However, when Liu Pi was defeated and fled to Dong'ou, they killed him to appease the Han, and therefore escaped any retaliation. Liu Pi's son, Liu Ziju, fled to Minyue and worked to incite a war between the Minyue and Dong'ou.

In 138, Minyue attacked Dong'ou and besieged their capital. Dong'ou managed to send someone to appeal for help from the Han. Opinions at the Han court were mixed on whether or not to help Dong'ou. Grand commandant Tian Fen was of the opinion that the Yue constantly attacked each other and it was not in the Han's interest to interfere in their affairs. Palace counsellor Zhuang Zhu argued that to not aid Dong'ou would be to signal the end of the empire just like the Qin. A compromise was made to allow Zhuang Zhu to call up troops, but only from Kuaiji Commandery, and finally an army was transported by sea to Dong'ou. By the time the Han forces had arrived, Minyue had already withdrawn its troops. The king of Dong'ou no longer wished to live in Dong'ou, so he requested permission for the inhabitants of his state to move into Han territory. Permission was granted and he and all his people settled in the region between the Yangtze and Huai River.

In 137, Minyue invaded Nanyue. An imperial army was sent against them, but the Minyue king was murdered by his brother Zou Yushan, who sued for peace with the Han. The Han enthroned Zou Wuzhu's grandson, Zou Chou, as king. After they left, Zou Yushan secretly declared himself king while the Han backed Zou Chou found himself powerless. When the Han found out about this the emperor deemed it too troublesome to punish Yushan and let the matter slide.

In 112, Nanyue rebelled against the Han. Zou Yushan pretended to send forces to aid the Han against Nanyue, but secretly maintained contact with Nanyue and only took his forces as far as Jieyang. Han general Yang Pu wanted to attack Minyue for their betrayal; however, the emperor felt that their forces were already too exhausted for any further military action, so the army was disbanded. The next year, Zou Yushan learned that Yang Pu had requested permission to attack him and saw that Han forces were amassing at his border. Zou Yushan made a preemptive attack against the Han, taking Baisha, Wulin, and Meiling, killing three commanders. In the winter, the Han retaliated with a multi-pronged attack by Han Yue, Yang Pu, Wang Wenshu, and two Yue marquises. When Han Yue arrived at the Minyue capital, the Yue native Wu Yang rebelled against Zou Yushan and murdered him. Wu Yang was enfeoffed by the Han as marquis of Beishi. Emperor Wu of Han felt it was too much trouble to occupy Minyue as it was a region full of narrow mountain passes. He commanded the army to evict the region and resettle the people between the Yangtze and Huai River, leaving the region (modern Fujian) a deserted land.

Lạc Việt
Lạc Việt, known in Chinese history as Luoyue, was an ancient conglomeration of Yue tribes in what is now modern Guangxi and northern Vietnam. According to Vietnamese folklore and legend, the Lạc Việt founded a state called Văn Lang c. 2879 BC and were ruled by the Hùng kings, who were descended from Lạc Long Quân (Lạc Dragon Lord). Lạc Long Quân came from the sea and subdued all the evil of the land, taught the people how to cultivate rice and wear clothes, and then returned to the sea again. He then met and married Âu Cơ, a goddess, daughter of Đế Lai. Âu Cơ soon bore an egg sac, from which hatched a hundred children. The first born son became Hùng King and ancestor of Luoyue people.

Despite its legendary origins, Lạc Việt history only begins in the 7th century BC with the first Hùng king in Mê Linh uniting the various tribes.

In 208, the Western Ou (Xi'ou or Nam Cương) king Thục Phán, a descendant of Shu royalty, conquered Văn Lang.

Âu Việt
The Âu Việt, known in Chinese as Ouyue, resided in modern northeast Vietnam, Guangdong province, and Guangxi province. At some point they split and became the Western Ou and the Eastern Ou. In the late 3rd century BC, Thục Phán, a descendant of the last ruler of Shu, came to rule the Western Ou. In 219 BC, Western Ou came under attack from the Qin empire and lost its king. Seeking refuge, Thục Phán led a group of dispossessed Ou lords south in 208 BC and conquered the Lạc Việt state of Văn Lang, which he renamed Âu Lạc. Henceforth he came to be known as An Dương Vương.

An Dương Vương and the Ou lords built the citadel Cổ Loa, literally 'Old snail'—so called because its walls were laid out in concentric rings reminiscent of a snail shell. According to legend, the construction of the citadel was halted by a group of spirits seeking to gain revenge for the son of the previous king. The spirits were led by a white chicken. A golden turtle appeared, subdued the white chicken, and protected An Dương Vương until the citadel's completion. When the turtle departed, he left one of his claws behind, which An Dương Vương used as the trigger for his magical crossbow, the "Saintly Crossbow of the Supernaturally Luminous Golden Claw".

An Dương Vương sent a giant called Lý Ông Trọng to the Qin dynasty as tribute. During his stay with the Qin, Lý Ông Trọng distinguished himself in fighting the Xiongnu, after which he returned to his native village and died there.

In 179 BC, An Dương Vương acknowledged the suzerainty of the Han dynasty, causing Zhao Tuo of Nanyue to become hostile and mobilize forces against Âu Lạc. Zhao Tuo's initial attack was unsuccessful. According to legend, Zhao Tuo asked for a truce and sent his son to conduct a marriage alliance with An Dương Vương's daughter. Zhao Tuo's son stole the turtle claw that powered An Dương Vương's magical crossbow, rendering his realm without protection. When Zhao Tuo invaded again, An Dương Vương fled into the sea where he was welcomed by the golden turtle. Âu Lạc was divided into the two prefectures of Jiaozhi and Jiuzhen.

Nanyue
Zhao Tuo was a Qin general originally born around 240 BC in the state of Zhao (within modern Hebei). When Zhao was annexed by Qin in 222 BC, Zhao Tuo joined the Qin and served as one of their generals in the conquest of the Baiyue. The territory of the Baiyue was divided into the three provinces of Guilin, Nanhai, and Xiang. Zhao served as magistrate in the province of Nanhai until his military commander, Ren Xiao, fell ill. Before he died, Ren advised Zhao not to get involved in the affairs of the declining Qin, and instead set up his own independent kingdom centered around the geographically remote and isolated city of Panyu (modern Guangzhou). Ren gave Zhao full authority to act as military commander of Nanhai and died shortly afterwards. Zhao immediately closed off the roads at Hengpu, Yangshan, and Huangqi. Using one excuse or another he eliminated the Qin officials and replaced them with his own appointees. By the time the Qin fell in 206 BC, Zhao had also conquered the provinces of Guilin and Xiang. He declared himself King Wu of Nanyue (Southern Yue). Unlike Qin Shi Huang, Zhao respected Yue customs, rallied their local rulers, and let local chieftains continue their old policies and local political traditions. Under Zhao's rule, he encouraged Han Chinese settlers to intermarry with the indigenous Yue tribes through instituting a policy of 'harmonizing and gathering' while creating a syncretic culture that was a blend of Han and Yue cultures.

In 196, Emperor Gaozu of Han dispatched Lu Jia to recognize Zhao Tuo as king of Nanyue. Lu gave Zhao a seal legitimizing him as king of Nanyue in return for his nominal submission to the Han. Zhao received him in the manner of the local people with his hair in a chignon while squatting. Lu accused him of going native and forgetting his true ancestry. Zhao excused himself by saying he had forgotten the northern customs after living in the south for so long.

In 185, Empress Lü's officials outlawed trade of iron and horses with Nanyue. Zhao Tuo retaliated by proclaiming himself Emperor Wu of Nanyue and attacking the neighboring kingdom of Changsha, taking a few border towns. In 181 BC, Zhou Zao was dispatched by Empress Lü to attack Nanyue, but the heat and dampness caused many of his officers and men to fall ill, and he failed to make it across the mountains into enemy territory. Zhao began to menace the neighboring kingdoms of Minyue, Xiou (Western Ou), and Luoluo. After securing their submission he began passing out edicts in a similar manner to the Han emperor.

In 180, Emperor Wen of Han made efforts to appease Zhao. Learning that Zhao's parents were buried in Zhending, he set aside a town close by just to take care of their graves. Zhao's cousins were appointed to high offices at the Han court. He also withdrew the army stationed in Changsha on the Han-Nanyue border. In response, Zhao rescinded his claims to imperium while communicating with the Han, however he continued using the title of emperor within his kingdom. Tribute bearing envoys from Nanyue were sent to the Han and thus the iron trade was resumed.

In 179, Zhao Tuo defeated the kingdom of Âu Lạc and annexed it.

Zhao Tuo died in 137 and was succeeded by his grandson, Zhao Mo. Upon Zhao Mo's accession, the neighboring king of Minyue, Zou Ying, sent his army to attack Nanyue. Zhao sent for help from the Han dynasty, his nominal vassal overlord. The Han responded by sending troops against Minyue, but before they could get there, Zou Ying was killed by his brother Zou Yushan, who surrendered to the Han. The Han army was recalled. Zhao considered visiting the Han court in order to show his gratitude. His high ministers argued against it, reminding him that his father kept his distance from the Han and merely avoided a breach of etiquette to keep the peace. Zhao therefore pleaded illness and never went through with the trip. Zhao did actually fall ill several years later and died in 122. He was succeeded by his son, Zhao Yingqi.

After the Han dynasty aided Nanyue in fending off an invasion by Minyue, Zhao Mo sent his son Yingqi to the Han court, where he joined the emperor's guard. Zhao Yingqi married a Han Chinese woman from the Jiu family of Handan, who gave birth to his second son, Zhao Xing. Yingqi behaved without any scruples and committed murder on several occasions. When his father died in 122, he refused to visit the Han emperor to ask for his leave due to fearing that he would be arrested and punished for his behavior. Yingqi died in 115 and was succeeded by his second son, Zhao Xing, rather than the eldest, Zhao Jiande.

In 113, Emperor Wu of Han sent Anguo Shaoji to summon Zhao Xing and the Queen Dowager Jiu to Chang'an for an audience with the emperor. The Queen Dowager Jiu, who was Han Chinese, was regarded as a foreigner by the Yue people, and it was widely rumored that she had an illicit relationship with Anguo Shaoji before she married Zhao Yingqi. When Anguo arrived, quite a number of people believed the two resumed their relationship. The Queen Dowager feared that there would be a revolt against her authority so she urged the king and his ministers to seek closer ties to the Han. Xing agreed to and proposed that relations between Nanyue and the Han should be normalized with a triennial journey to the Han court as well as the removal of custom barriers along the border. The prime minister of Nanyue, Lü Jia, held military power and his family was more well connected than either the king or the Queen Dowager. According to the Records of the Grand Historian and Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư, Lü Jia was chief of a Lạc Việt tribe, related to King Qin of Cangwu by marriage, and over 70 of his kinsmen served as officials in various parts of the Nanyue court. Lü refused to meet the Han envoys which angered the Queen Dowager. She tried to kill him at a banquet but was stopped by Xing. The Queen Dowager tried to gather enough support at court to kill Lü in the following months, but her reputation prevented it. When news of the situation reached Emperor Wu in 112, he ordered Zhuang Can to lead a 2,000 men expedition to Nanyue. However, Zhuang refused to accept the mission, declaring that it was illogical to send so many men under the pretext of peace, but so few to enforce the might of the Han. The former prime minister of Jibei, Han Qianqiu, offered to lead the expedition and arrest Lü Jia. When Han crossed the Han–Nanyue border, Lü conducted a coup, killing Xing, Queen Dowager Jiu, and all the Han emissaries in the capital. Xing's brother, Zhao Jiande, was declared the new king.

The 2000 men led by Han Qianqiu took several small towns but were defeated as they neared Panyu, which greatly shocked and angered Emperor Wu. The emperor then sent an army of 100,000 to attack Nanyue. The army marched on Panyu in a multi-pronged assault. Lu Bode advanced from the Hui River and Yang Pu from the Hengpu River. Three natives of Nanyue also joined the Han. One advanced from the Li River, the second invaded Cangwu, and the third advanced from the Zangke River. In the winter of 111 BC Yang Pu captured Xunxia and broke through the line at Shimen. With 20,000 men he drove back the vanguard of the Nanyue army and waited for Lu Bode. However, Lu failed to meet up on time and when he did arrive, he had no more than a thousand men. Yang reached Panyu first and attacked it at night, setting fire to the city. Panyu surrendered at dawn. Jiande and Lü Jia fled the city by boat, heading east to appeal for Minyue's aid, but the Han learned of their escape and sent the general Sima Shuang after them. Both Jiande and Lü Jia were captured and executed.

Dianyue
In 135 BC, the Han envoy Tang Meng brought gifts to Duotong, the king of Yelang, which bordered the Dian Kingdom, and convinced him to submit to the Han. Jianwei Commandery was established in the region. In 122, Emperor Wu dispatched four groups of envoys to the southwest in search of a route to Daxia in Central Asia. One group was welcomed by the king of Dian but none of them were able to make it any further as they were blocked in the north by the Sui and Kunming tribes of the Erhai region and in the south by the Di and Zuo tribes. However, they learned that further west there was a kingdom called Dianyue where the people rode elephants and traded with the merchants from Shu in secret.

Han dynasty

In 111 BC, the Han conquered Nanyue and ruled it for the next several hundred years. The former territory of Nanyue was converted into nine commanderies and two outpost commands.

Nanyue was seen as attractive to the Han rulers as they desired to secure the area's maritime trade routes and gain access to luxury goods from the south such as pearls, incense, elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns, tortoise shells, coral, parrots, kingfishers, peacocks, and other rare luxuries to satisfy the demands of the Han aristocracy. Other considerations such as frontier security, revenue from a relatively large agricultural population, and access to tropical commodities all contributed to the Han dynasty's desire to retain control of the region. Panyu was already a major center for international maritime trade and was one of the most economically prosperous metropolises during the Han dynasty. Regions in the principal ports of modern Guangdong were used for the production of pearls and a trading terminal for maritime silk with Ancient India and the Roman Empire.

Sinicization of the southern Han dynasty which used to be Nanyue was the result of several factors. Northern and central China was often a theater of imperial dynastic conflict which resulted in waves of Han Chinese refugees fleeing to the south. With dynastic changes, wars, and foreign invasions, Han Chinese living in central China were forced to expand into the unfamiliar and southern regions in large numbers. As the number of Han Chinese immigrants into the Yue coastal regions increased, many Chinese families joined them to escape political unrest, military service, tax obligations, persecution, or sought new opportunities. As early arrivals took advantage of the easily accessible fertile land, latecomers had to continue migrating to more remote areas. Conflicts would sometimes arise between the two groups but eventually Han Chinese immigrants from the northern plains moved south to form ad hoc groups and take on the role as powerful local political leaders, many of whom accepted Chinese government titles. Each new wave of Han immigrants exerted additional pressure on the indigenous Yue inhabitants as the Han Chinese in southern China gradually became the predominant ethnic group in local life while displacing the Yue tribes into more mountainous and remote border areas.

The difficulty of logistics and the malarial climate in the south made Han migration and eventual sinicization of the region a slow process. Describing the contrast in immunity towards malaria between the indigenous Yue and the Chinese immigrants, Robert B. Marks (2017:145-146) writes:

"The Yue population in southern China, especially those who lived in the lower reaches of the river valleys, may have had knowledge of the curative value of the 'qinghao' plant, and possibly could also have acquired a certain level of immunity to malaria before Han Chinese even appeared on the scene. But for those without acquired immunity—such as Han Chinese migrants from north China—the disease would have been deadly."

Over the same period, the Han dynasty incorporated many other border peoples such as the Dian and assimilated them. Under the direct rule and greater efforts at sinification by the victorious Han, the territories of the Lac states were annexed and ruled directly, along with other former Yue territories to the north as provinces of the Han empire.

Trưng Sisters
In 40 AD, the Lạc lord Thi Sách rebelled on the advice of his wife Trưng Trắc. The administrator of Jiaozhi Commandery, Su Ding, was too afraid to confront them and fled. The commanderies of Jiuzhen, Hepu, and Rinan all rebelled. Trưng Trắc abolished the Han taxes and was recognized as queen at Mê Linh. Later Vietnamese sources would claim that her husband was killed by the Han, thus stirring her to action, but Chinese sources make it clear Trưng Trắc was always in the leading position, alongside her sister Trưng Nhị. Together they came to be known as the legendary Trưng Sisters of Vietnamese history. A large number of names and biographies of leaders under the Trưng Sisters are recorded in temples dedicated to them, many of them also women.

In 42 AD, the veteran Han general Ma Yuan led 20,000 troops against the Trưng Sisters. His advance was checked by Cổ Loa Citadel for over a year, but the Lạc lords became increasingly nervous at the sight of a large Han army. Realizing that she would soon lose her followers if she did not do anything, Trưng Trắc sallied out against the Han army and lost badly, losing more than 10,000 followers. Her followers fled, allowing Ma Yuan to advance. By early 43 AD, both sisters had been captured and executed.

Post-rebellion sinicisation
After the rebellion of the Trưng Sisters, more direct rule and greater efforts at sinicisation were imposed by the Han dynasty. The territories of the Lạc lords were revoked and ruled directly, along with other former Yue territories to the north, as provinces of the Han empire. Division among the Yue leaders were exploited by the Han dynasty with the Han military winning battles against the southern kingdoms and commanderies that were of geographic and strategic value to them. Han foreign policy also took advantage of the political turmoil among rival Yue leaders and enticed them with bribes and lured prospects for submitting to the Han Empire as a subordinate vassal.

Continuing internal Han Chinese migration during the Han dynasty eventually brought all the Yue coastal peoples under Chinese political control and cultural influence. As the number of Han Chinese migrants intensified following the annexation of Nanyue, the Yue people were gradually absorbed and driven out into poorer land on the hills and into the mountains. Chinese military garrisons showed little patience with the Yue tribes who refused to submit to Han Chinese imperial power and resisted the influx of Han Chinese immigrants, driving them out to the coastal extremities such as the river valleys and highland areas where they became marginal scavengers and outcasts. Han dynasty rulers saw the opportunity offered by the Chinese family agricultural settlements and used it as a tool for colonizing newly conquered regions and transforming those environments. Displaced Yue tribes often staged sneak attacks and small-scale raids or attacks to reclaim their lost territories on Chinese settlements termed "rebellions" by traditional historians but were eventually stymied by the strong action of the Han dynasty's military superiority.

Shanyue
The Shanyue "Mountain Yue" were one of the last groups of Yue mentioned in Chinese history. They lived in the mountain regions of modern Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and Fujian.

Yan Baihu, or "White Tiger Yan", was a bandit leader of possibly Shanyue origins. When Sun Ce came to Wu Commandery in 195, Yan Baihu gave refuge to the displaced Xu Gong and threatened the flank of Sun Ce's army. However, Sun Ce paid him no attention and the two avoided any altercations. In 197, Cao Cao's agent Chen Yu provoked Yan into rebellion. Sun Ce sent Lü Fan to drive out Chen Yu while he himself attacked Yan. The defeated Yan fled south to join Xu Zhao but died soon afterwards. Remnants of Yan's band joined Xu Gong in 200 to threaten Sun Ce's rear as he attacked Huang Zu in the west. Sun Ce decided to retreat and finish off the bandits once and for all, only to fall into an ambush and die at their hands.

In 203, they rebelled against Sun Quan's rule and were defeated by the generals Lü Fan, Cheng Pu, and Taishi Ci. In 217, Sun Quan appointed Lu Xun supreme commander of an army to suppress martial activities by the Shanyue in Guiji (modern Shaoxing). Captured Shanyue tribesmen were recruited into the army. In 234, Zhuge Ke was made governor of Danyang. Under his governorship, the region was cleansed of the Shanyue through systematic destruction of their settlements. Captured tribesmen were used as front line fodder in the army. The remaining population was resettled in lowlands and many became tenant farmers for Chinese landowners.

Post-Han
The fall of the Han dynasty and the following period of division sped up the process of sinicisation. Periods of instability and war in northern and central China, such as the Northern and Southern dynasties and during the Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty sent waves of Han Chinese into the south. Waves of migration and subsequent intermarriage and cross-cultural dialogue gave rise to modern Chinese demographics with a dominant Han Chinese majority and minority non-Han Chinese indigenous peoples in the south. By the Tang dynasty (618–907), the term "Yue" had largely become a regional designation rather than a cultural one, as in the Wuyue state during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in what is now Zhejiang province. During the Song dynasty, a bridge known as the Guojie qiao (World Crossing Bridge) was built at Jiaxing between the modern border of Jiangsu province and Zhejiang province. On the northern side of the bridge stands a statue of King Fuchai of Wu and on the southern side, a statue of King Goujian of Yue. Successive waves of migration in different localities during various times in Chinese history over the past two thousand years have given rise to different dialect groups seen in Southern China today. Modern Lingnan culture contains both Nanyue and Han Chinese elements: the modern Cantonese language resembles Middle Chinese (the prestige language of the Tang dynasty), but has retained some features of the long-extinct Nanyue language. Some distinctive features of the vocabulary, phonology, and syntax of southern varieties of Chinese are attributed to substrate languages that were spoken by the Yue.

Legacy
In ancient China, the characters and  (both yuè in pinyin and jyut6 in Jyutping) were used interchangeably, but they are differentiated in modern Chinese:

 * The character 越 refers to the original territory of the state of Yue, which was based in what is now northern Zhejiang, especially the areas around Shaoxing and Ningbo. It is also used to write Vietnam, a word adapted from Nanyue (Nam Việt), (literal English translation as Southern Yue). This character is also still used in the city Guangzhou for the Yuexiu (越秀) district, and when referring to the Nanyue Kingdom.
 * The character 粵 is associated with the southern province of Guangdong. Both the regional dialects of Yue Chinese and the standard form, popularly called Cantonese, are spoken in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macau and in many Cantonese communities around the world.

Vietnam
Việt is the Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation of Yue, derived from Middle Chinese. The modern name of Vietnam derives from Nanyue, or Nam Việt, except reversed.

Culture
The Han referred to the various non-Han "barbarian" peoples of southern China as "Baiyue", saying they possessed habits like adapting to water, having their hair cropped short and tattooed. The Han also said their language was "animal shrieking" and that they lacked morals, modesty, civilization and culture. According to one Han Chinese immigrant of the 2nd century BC, "The Yue cut their hair short, tattooed their body, live in bamboo groves with neither towns nor villages, possessing neither bows or arrows, nor horses or chariots." They also blackened their teeth.

Militarily, the ancient states of Yue and Wu were distinct from other Sinitic states for their possession of a navy. Unlike other Chinese states of the time, they also named their boats and swords. A Chinese text described the Yue as a people who used boats as their carriages and oars as their horses. The marshy lands of the south gave the Gouwu and Yuyue people unique characteristics. According to Robert Marks, the Yue lived in what is now Fujian province gained their livelihood mostly from fishing, hunting, and practiced some kind of swidden rice farming. Prior to Han Chinese migration from the north, the Yue tribes cultivated wet rice, practiced fishing and slash-and-burn agriculture, domesticated water buffalo, built stilt houses, tattooed their faces and dominated the coastal regions from shores all the way to the fertile valleys in the interior mountains. Water transport was paramount in the south, so the two states became advanced in shipbuilding and developed maritime warfare technology mapping trade routes to Eastern coasts of China and Southeast Asia.

Swords
The Yue were known for their swordsmanship and producing fine double-edged swords. Kao Gong Ji stated that Wu and Yue manufactured the best double-edged swords. According to the Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue, King Goujian met a female sword fighter called Nanlin (Yuenü) who demonstrated mastery over the art, and so he commanded his top five commanders to study her technique. Ever since, the technique came to be known as the "Sword of the Lady of Yue". The Yue were also known for their possession of mystical knives embued with the talismanic power of dragons or other amphibious creatures.

The Zhan Guo Ce mentions the high quality of southern swords and their ability to cleave through oxen, horses, bowls, and basins, but would shatter if used on a pillar or rock. Wu and Yue swords were highly valued and those who owned them would hardly ever use them for fear of damage, however in Wu and Yue these swords were commonplace and treated with less reverence. The Yuejue shu (Record of Precious Swords) mentions several named swords: Zhanlu (Black), Haocao (Bravery), Juque (Great Destroyer), Lutan (Dew Platform), Chunjun (Purity), Shengxie (Victor over Evil), Yuchang (Fish-belly), Longyuan (Dragon Gulf), Taie (Great Riverbank), and Gongbu (Artisanal Display). Many of these were made by the Yue swordsmith Ou Yezi.

Even after Wu and Yue were assimilated into larger Chinese polities, memory of their swords lived on. During the Han dynasty, Liu Pi King of Wu (195–154 BC) had a sword named Wujian to honour the history of metalworking in his kingdom.

Language
Knowledge of Yue speech is limited to fragmentary references and possible loanwords in other languages, principally Chinese. The longest is the Song of the Yue Boatman, a short song transcribed phonetically in Chinese characters in 528 BC and included, with a Chinese version, in the Garden of Stories compiled by Liu Xiang five centuries later.

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title: Baiyue


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Chetham's School of Music

Chetham's School of Music is a private co-educational boarding and day music school in Manchester, England. Chetham's educates pupils between the ages of 8 and 18, all of whom enter via musical auditions.

The music school was established in 1969 from Chetham's Hospital School, founded as a charity school by Humphrey Chetham in 1653. After becoming a boys' grammar school in 1952, the school turned to music as its speciality, at the same time becoming a private school and accepting its first female students. There are approximately 300 students on roll, including a large sixth form making up around half of the school. Approximately two-thirds of students board on site, with others travelling in as day students from around Greater Manchester. The oldest parts of the school date to the 1420s, when the building was constructed as a residence for priests of the church which is now Manchester Cathedral. These parts are listed buildings housing Chetham's Library.

Academic and music teaching moved into a new, building in 2012; this replaced the Victorian Palatine building and allowed easier access for concert visitors. A 482-seat concert hall, Stoller Hall, opened within the New School Building in 2017.

Beginnings
The school is built on the site of Manchester Castle, a fortified manor house owned by the Grelleys after the Norman Conquest, at the confluence of the River Irwell and the River Irk. Medieval Manchester grew around the manor house and the parish church, which eventually became Manchester Cathedral.

In the early 14th century, the de la Warre family acquired the land through marriage. Thomas de la Warre refounded the church as a collegiate church in 1421. De la Warre gave the site of his manor house for the construction of a college, where eight priests, four clerks and six lay choristers lived in the care of a warden. It is likely that building began between 1424 and 1429, and the main hall and cloister rooms finished by 1458. It remains the most complete building of its kind in the country, and at the time of its construction, was the second largest building in Manchester, surpassed only by the church.

The college was dissolved during the English Reformation in 1547, and purchased by Edward Stanley, 3rd Earl of Derby. It was re-founded by Queen Mary, before Elizabeth I refounded it as 'Christ's College' in 1578. This arrangement lasted until the foundation of Manchester Cathedral in 1847. The college buildings remained the property of the Stanleys, and wardens (including the Elizabethan astronomer and mathematician John Dee) lived on the premises with their families and servants. During the English Civil War, the college was used as a gunpowder factory and a prison and was left damaged by powder, disused and overrun by pigs. Lord James Stanley, a Royalist, was executed in 1651, and Parliament confiscated his property, including the college.

Humphrey Chetham
Humphrey Chetham was an unmarried and childless financier, philanthropist and cloth merchant from Manchester. In the 1640s he provided money for the maintenance and education of fourteen poor boys from Manchester, six from Salford, and two from Droylsden. In March 1649 he wrote to the Earl of Derby about his intention to establish a school. He attempted unsuccessfully to acquire the buildings, which were "spoyld and ruin'd and become like a dunghill", to provide a hospital, school and library. In his will, Chetham left over £8,000 from his estate (which was worth about £14,000 in total) to establish a hospital school for 40 poor local boys, between the ages of six and ten and from "honest" families, who should be taught and cared for until they were 14. His executors obtained the lease of the college in 1654 to house both the school and library.

Charity school
After repairs to the college were completed in mid-1656, the first admissions were made. The first headmaster, Richard Dutton, was appointed in 1655, and in 1665 the institution became an incorporated charity. The number of pupils grew, with admissions rising to 100 by the 1870s. Boys were admitted based on the parish they lived in, and on need, health and background of the family. Illegitimate boys were not admitted, and all boys had to be able to read to a certain standard that meant they were not hard to teach. In 1878, a new schoolroom designed by architect Alfred Waterhouse (who designed Manchester Town Hall) was built in a Tudor style. The number of boys admitted was reduced to 75 in 1908 to save money, though three years later admissions increased again to 99. In 1916, no boys were admitted due to lack of funding caused by World War I, and in 1918 the number was limited to 70. Successful public appeals resulted in the numbers rising to 97 in 1929. In 1926 a scheme was set up which allowed boys to apply for scholarships to join a grammar school, which meant that while they lived at Chetham's, they were educated elsewhere during the day. Further, they would stay at grammar school until at least the age of 16 and sometimes 18.

World War II and aftermath: 1939 to 1952
During World War II, the boys were evacuated to the seaside town of Cleveleys, Lancashire, where they shared accommodation with a primary school. Chetham's was damaged by an explosion in December 1940, when most of the windows were shattered and the roof set alight. The boys relocated to Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, in 1943, although thirteen boys attending grammar school moved to Buxton College. By 1944 the governors believed that it would not be appropriate for the school to return to Manchester, and it was proposed the site become a religious education centre. However, after years of discussion, it was decided to return the school to Manchester. The Education Act 1944, which stipulated that schools should be classified as primary or secondary, complicated matters, since Chetham's went across the middle. It was decided in 1950 that Chetham's should become a grammar school, and this change took place two years later. In 1950, Chetham's amalgamated with Nicholls' Hospital School, a similar school based in Ardwick which had been established in 1863. While it could take up to 100 boys, by the end of the war there were only 22 and it was considered beneficial for the schools to merge.

Later history: since 1952
After the change in organisation, Chetham's could no longer afford to provide education based on scholarships and other allowances, and began charging fees. In 1952, the school buildings were considered insufficient so a new block was built, it is currently known as the Nicholls Building and opened in 1955. By 1960 the numbers of boys admitted had increased significantly, particularly among day pupils; 230 non-boarding students attended that year, alongside 64 boarders.

Before becoming a specialist school, Chetham's had a good reputation for music, and on this basis the decision was made to become a co-educational music school in 1969. The former Palatine Hotel, which housed offices and shops, was converted into extra teaching space and practice rooms. In 1969, 50 students were admitted based on musical potential and by 1972 this had risen to 150, more than half of the entire school. In 1977 the school changed to its present name. In 1978 the Long Millgate building, the original home of Manchester Grammar School, was purchased to provide additional space to the campus. Also included with the building was The Whiteley Hall, a 200-seat central performance space which became the primary venue of Chetham's concerts until 2017.

New College House, a boarding house for girls at Chetham's, was opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1994. The boarding capacity at the school was further increased following an extension to the Nicholls Building in 2004. In 2012, a new school building adjacent to the existing site, purpose-designed for music teaching, was opened by the Earl of Wessex (Patron of the school). This included The Carole Nash Hall, a 100-seat recital hall, and space for a 400-seat concert hall, which would later open in 2017 as The Stoller Hall. The Long Millgate building continues to be used as a boarding house for students, as well as a dining space, a school gym and currently houses the school's art department. The Palatine Building was demolished in 2016 to reveal the previously hidden medieval buildings and allow easier access to the library.

In June 2021, a fire broke out within the Long Millgate building, beginning at approximately 2.20am within The Whiteley Hall. The adjacent student boarding houses, Millgate House and Victoria House, were reported to have been successfully evacuated with no harm caused to either the students or staff. Fire crews reportedly arrived immediately on the scene and contained the blaze, however the incident caused substantial damage to The Whiteley Hall itself, including the main stage and a pipe organ originally installed in 2002. The school gym on the lower levels also suffered water damage.

Historical abuse allegations and convictions (2013 onwards)
In February 2013, Michael Brewer, Director of Music from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, and his ex-wife, were convicted of indecently assaulting a pupil, Frances Andrade, between 1978 and 1982. Andrade committed suicide after giving evidence at their trial. Prosecutors claimed Brewer was forced to resign in the 1990s after an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old girl. The school's statement said the current staff were "shocked ... to the core" by the revelations of "the most appalling acts which took place during his time at the school ..." In March 2013, Brewer was found guilty of indecent assault and sentenced to six years imprisonment.

It was reported that allegations of assault were made against another teacher in the 1980s. On 12 February, Malcolm Layfield, Head of Strings at the Royal Northern College of Music resigned from the RNCM Board after claims of his previous sexual misconduct were brought up during the Brewer hearing. Before his appointment at RNCM, Layfield had admitted to having relationships with six Chetham's pupils aged between 16 and 18 whilst he taught there. Two RNCM teachers, including the Head of Keyboard Studies, Martin Roscoe, resigned in protest at his appointment in 2002. In October 2013 Layfield was arrested on suspicion of raping and indecently assaulting an 18-year-old woman between 1988 and 1999, but was found not guilty at a trial in 2015.

On 14 February 2013, Wen Zhou Li, a violin teacher at the Royal Northern College of Music and former teacher at Chetham's, was arrested on charges of rape that allegedly occurred whilst he taught at the school. The case was dropped in 2016 before coming to trial, and Wen Zhou Li was told that he left court "without a stain on his character". Allegations of sexual abuse were also made against the pianist Ryszard Bakst, who died in 1999, and former violin teacher Christopher Ling. Ling, who had moved to Los Angeles in the 1990s, shot himself at his home when US marshals arrived in September 2015 with a provisional arrest warrant.

On 8 May 2013, the Greater Manchester Police reported that over 30 women had reported incidents of abuse relating to the school. The investigation into allegations of abuse made against individuals said by police to "have or have had connections with either Chetham's and/or Royal Northern College of Music and/or have taught music privately", was known as Operation Kiso. Thirty-nine individuals were named and 10 of these proactively investigated; the school stated that it was assisting the police with their inquiries, and had instigated an action plan to review their safeguarding processes and procedures. In 2013, two independent reports found that school "failed to follow its own guidelines to keep children safe. They also discovered that no formal, minuted meetings had taken place at the school to discuss the recent allegations and consider changes to its child protection policy."

Between September and October 2019, Chetham’s School of Music gave evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, after applying as a core participant along with four other residential music schools. In a statement from Chetham's, Alun Jones, the principal in 2019 commented, “I welcome this Inquiry. Victims and survivors of child sexual abuse need to know that they are being listened to and that changes happen as a result of what they say. As Principal of Chetham’s I have a duty of care to our current and future students to make sure we also do everything possible to learn from victims and survivors’ experiences.”

In March 2022, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse delivered its preliminary findings, which included damning statements about the conduct of senior staff at Chetham's School of Music, criticising a cultural reluctance to report serious safeguarding concerns, also seen across other participating schools within the inquiry. One such statement from the report read, "On occasion, when allegations of child sexual abuse arose, headteachers moved to protect the reputation of the school rather than the welfare of victims and other children at the school.". It concluded that the power and influence of its eminent music teachers at the time further compromised its pupils.

In October 2022, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse made 20 recommendations within its final report. In a statement, Chetham's School of Music said, "To the victims and survivors of abuse including their families and loved ones, we are truly sorry [...] [This] report confirms above all else that there is no room for complacency. As the report says ‘child sexual abuse is not a problem consigned to the past'. These mistakes must never be repeated, here or elsewhere. We therefore welcome all 20 recommendations in the report. [...] “None of this work can undo past failures, and our apologies will never be enough, but we will do everything in our power to ensure that young people across the UK today are safe and protected.”

Admissions
Students are admitted to the school on musical ability and talent. Funding for up to 100% of study and boarding fees is available to most students through the UK Government's Music and Dance Scheme.

Curriculum
As a specialist music school, Chetham's requires all students to study a curriculum that concentrates on music and other subjects in accordance with the National Curriculum. Students taking GCSEs and A-levels study music. All students study at least two instruments and choir practice is compulsory.

Ensembles form an important part of the musical curriculum, with all students taking part in at least one. The ensembles include Chetham's Symphony Orchestra, which has performed on BBC Radio 3. The award-winning Big Band played an integral part in the creation of a Jazz Studies programme, and has won many prizes, including The Daily Telegraph Young Jazz Competition, and the junior section of the BBC Radio 2 Big Band of the Year Competition three times. The Chamber Choir has performed on Songs of Praise and the BBC Proms and the Symphonic Wind Band and Orchestra have won prizes at the Boosey and Hawkes National Concert Festival.

School life
Chetham's admits boarding and day students to one of three houses: Victoria House, a mixed-gender house for students aged 8–13; Millgate House, for boys aged 13–18; and New College House aged 13–18. In senior houses, boarding students usually share rooms for four people, and in the sixth form students either have single rooms or share with one other person. Students have a personal tutor to discuss their progress, and boarding students have a house parent who communicates with parents at home.

Campus
Chetham's is situated in Manchester City Centre, close to Manchester Victoria railway station, The National Football Museum and Manchester Cathedral. There are several buildings on the site, many of which are listed. They surround a large open space, the north part is a car park and courtyard, and the south part is a playground.

College House
College House, the original 15th-century college, is a Grade I listed building built of sandstone in the shape of a lowercase 'b' with a slate roof. It is accessed by the original gatehouse; which was constructed on a plinth and contains the original timbers. The upper storey is accessed by an external staircase. Baronial Hall, once the Great Hall, contains many of its original features, such as its timber roof, dais and canopy. There is a large fireplace dating from the 19th century, and three windows likely to date from the 16th century. The Audit Room, originally a common room, contains a panelled ceiling with decorations suggesting it was installed by the Stanley family. The upper room, originally the warden's chamber, is now the library reading room, and contains a large bay window within an elaborate Tudor arch, as well as original 17th-century doors. The west part of the building surrounding the cloister courtyard contained accommodation known as sets, for people who lived in college. There were two rooms in each set on two floors, the lower floor being used as a study. Historian Clare Hartwell, describes the cobbled courtyard which has a restored well as "one of the most atmospheric spaces in the building". It is surrounded by many windows, which were probably originally unglazed. Inside there are several corridors and passages containing open beams and original stonework. To the east is the kitchen and associated rooms, and further east are rooms used for administration offices, most of which have been substantially altered.

New School Building
Constructed in 2012 opposite Manchester Victoria Station and connected by a bespoke link bridge to the original site at Chetham's, the New School Building contains most academic teaching rooms and all music teaching rooms across seven floors, as well as two performance spaces. The Carole Nash Hall is used regularly for recitals and masterclasses, including free Lunchtime Concerts which take place five times each week during the school term. Its primary concert space, The Stoller Hall, was opened by Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex in 2017 and houses larger scale performances for audiences of up to 500. It was named after its chief benefactor Sir Norman Stoller, founder of The Stoller Charitable Trust.

Other buildings
The Millgate Building, the former site of Manchester Grammar School, is a Grade II listed building designed by Alfred Waterhouse in the 1870s. Attached to it is the Nicholls Building, which was originally built in 1955. Combined, they are known as The Long Millgate Buildings, which contain The Whiteley Hall, school gym, school kitchen and dining room, art department, and two student boarding houses. Following the opening of the New School Building in 2012, many of the old classrooms inside were repurposed and refurbished as student accommodation. A top-down extension of the Nicholls Building was completed in 2004, allowing for the construction of these additional boarding facilities. Originally purposed as sixth form accommodation, the Nicholls Building now only contains Victoria House for junior boarders.

The Waterhouse Building (formerly known as The Vallins Arts Centre) is another building on the site designed by Alfred Waterhouse in 1878. Waterhouse is Grade II listed and styled as a medieval chapel, it contains both upper and lower floor spaces often used as overflow classrooms and large ensemble rooms. Waterhouse was responsible for much of the alterations made to College House in the 19th century, and so the building was renamed in recognition of this. It formerly housed the school's drama department until the late 2010's, when the department was relocated to the lower levels of College House. It has been speculated that this building could eventually be repurposed as a future visitors centre for the adjacent Chetham's Library.

New College House is the third boarding house and was opened by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1994. Located adjacent to what is now Urbis and Cathedral Gardens, it was originally purpose-built as the Girls' House. It now houses both middle and sixth form students, complete with its own sixth form common room.

A small section of the former Palatine Building (demolished in 2016) also remains at the disused entrance gates adjacent to Manchester Cathedral and The Glade of Light Memorial. This section remains due to Grade I restrictions in relation to the medieval outer walls at Chetham's.

Notable alumni
Chetham's, as a music school, has produced many notable alumni. Many of its students become professional musicians, as well as conductors, teachers and actors. This is a partial list of alumni:
 * Max Beesley – actor
 * Olivia Chaney – folk singer
 * Jiafeng Chen – violinist
 * Gareth Owen – classical pianist
 * Gary Cooper – harpsichordist, fortepianist, and conductor
 * Thangam Debbonaire – Labour MP
 * Peter Donohoe – pianist
 * Richard Egarr – conductor and harpsichord performer, music director of the Academy of Ancient Music
 * Daniel Harding – conductor
 * David Hill – choral director
 * Stephen Hough – pianist
 * Guy Johnston – cellist
 * Paul Lewis – pianist
 * Mike Lindup – rock musician (Level 42)
 * Grant Llewellyn – conductor
 * Leon McCawley – pianist
 * Kevin Mallon conductor and violinist
 * Murray McLachlan – pianist
 * Anna Markland – pianist
 * Wayne Marshall – pianist, organist and conductor
 * Doug Naylor – writer of Red Dwarf
 * Jennifer Pike – violinist
 * Robert Plane – clarinettist
 * Greg Scott – violinist
 * Dominic Seldis – double bassist
 * Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points – electronic musician
 * Gwilym Simcock – jazz pianist, composer
 * Albert Cano Smit – pianist
 * Iyad Sughayer – pianist
 * David Thornton – euphonium player
 * Adam Walker – flautist
 * Andrew Wilde – pianist
 * Roger Wright – former director BBC Proms, Chief Executive of Aldeburgh Music

title: Chetham's School of Music


text:
Talk:Polovtsian

to merge with Kipchaks? Mikkalai 09:07, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * This has since been done. However, now we have a page both for the Kypchaks and for the Cumans. It's possible that we need to merge both of these, too. --Joy [shallot]   15:06, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Polovtsian