Yayan

Yayan is a theorized ancient form of the Chinese language used as a standard dialect by intellectuals during the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046 – 256 BC).^[1][2]

Yayan
雅言
Region	China
Era	Zhou dynasty
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Yayan
Language codes
ISO 639-3	lzh

Yayan
Chinese	雅言
Literal meaning	elegant speech
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin yǎyán Gwoyeu Romatzyh yeayan Wade–Giles ya3-yen2 Tongyong Pinyin yǎyán IPA jä214-21 jɛn35 Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization ngáh yìhn Jyutping ngaa5jin4 IPA ŋaː13 jiːn21 Southern Min Hokkien POJ ngá-giân Middle Chinese Middle Chinese ngaeX ngjon Old Chinese Baxter–Sagart (2014) *N-ɢˤraʔ *ŋa[n] Zhengzhang *ŋraːʔ *ŋan

History

Yayan was mentioned in the Analects, which says:^[3]

子所雅言、詩、書、執禮、皆雅言也。

The Master’s frequent themes of discourse were: the Odes, the History, and the maintenance of the Rules of Propriety. On all these he frequently discoursed.

— Analects §7.18

While the phrase 詩書執禮 has been agreed to refer to each of the Classic of Poetry, Book of Documents, and Book of Rites, scholars do not agree on the intended meaning of 雅言.^[4] Zheng Xuan (127–200 AD) interpreted it as:

Excerpt from Zheng Xuan's discussion of yayan in the Commentaries and Annotations on the Analects edited by He Yan

子所雅言、孔曰：「雅言、正言也。」
The Master said: "Elegant speech, proper speech it is".

鄭曰：「讀先王典法、必正言其音、然後義全、故不可有所諱。禮不誦、故言執。」
Zheng said: "When reading the laws and regulations of the ancient kings, it is necessary to pronounce their words properly; only then can righteousness be complete. Therefore, there should be no taboos. In the context of rituals, they are not recited, which is why we speak of adhering to them.

— Commentaries and Annotations on the Analects (論語注疏; ed. He Yan)

Some scholars have interpreted this "proper speech" phrase as possibly referring to a standard form of the language used by the literati of the era.

If historical, Yayan would have been based on the dialects of Old Chinese spoken around the Eastern Zhou (771–256 BC) capital of Luoyang.^[5][6]

References

1. Li, Yuming (2015). "Chapter 10". Language Planning in China (4th ed.). De Gruyter Mouton. p. 158. ISBN 9781614513926. Fangyan in the archaic times literally means "languages spoken in all the lands", and in contrast there existed common speech of the Han people (differing from general lingua franca) such as yayan 'elegant speech' of the Qin Dynasty, and tongyu 'general speech' of the Han Dynasty etc.
2. Jie, Dong (October 2010). "The enregisterment of Putonghua in practice". Language & Communication. 30 (4): 3. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2010.03.001. Recent voices from Chinese historical linguists maintain that as early as Zhou dynasty (about 1046–256 BC), there was a unified pronunciation called yayan (雅言) serving as the standard language (Chen, 1999; Guo and Gao, 2003). Yayan meant 'correct language' or 'standard language' in the Classical Chinese of that time. It is believed that Yayan was the common language of the officials in the court and the language standard of intellectuals.
3. Pain, Frederic (September 2020). ""Giao Chỉ" (Jiaozhi 交趾) as a Diffusion Center of Middle Chinese Diachronic Changes: Syllabic Weight Contrast and Phonologisation of Its Phonetic Correlates" (PDF). Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies. 50 (3): 365. There is quite a consensus among sinologists that this "lingua franca" across Sinitic dialects was the yayan 雅言 'decorous pronunciation' mentioned in the Analects (Analects VII.17).
4. Saitō, Mareshi (25 May 2023). "Chapter 4 - The Space of Cultivated Speech (Yayan 雅言): Writing and Language in the Sinographic Sphere". Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen 文. Brill. pp. 146–147. ISBN 9789004529441. All the commentaries largely agree that the expression "詩書執礼" here refers jointly to the classics of the Odes, the Documents (Shujing 書經 or Shangshu 尙書), and the Rites (Liji 禮記), but the understanding of the word "雅言" differs in old and new commentaries. According to the commentary of Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200), it meant, "he read using correct pronunciation without changing the reading out of respect/reverence (敬避),
5. Li, Yuming (2015). "Chapter 10". Language Planning in China (4th ed.). De Gruyter Mouton. p. 160. ISBN 9781614513926. The pre-Qin yayan 'elegant speech' was developed on the basis of the dialect in Chengzhou (current Luoyang in Henan province) where the capital was located.
6. Pain, Frederic (September 2020). ""Giao Chỉ" (Jiaozhi 交趾) as a Diffusion Center of Middle Chinese Diachronic Changes: Syllabic Weight Contrast and Phonologisation of Its Phonetic Correlates" (PDF). Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies. 50 (3): 366. The Confucian yayan was most probably based on the "lingua franca" that evolved in the Shang era and was spoken across the nowadays Henan region where political, commercial and cultural activities reached their summit throughout the late Shang era; accordingly the base dialect is customarily named the Zhongzhou 中州 (or Heluo 河洛) dialect, based on its geographical distribution, that is, the upper Central Plains centered around Luoyang 洛陽 in the Huanghe watershed (Chen 1999: 9).