Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The Chinese language in the first millennium BC, in which the earliest Confucian classics were written. Its pronunciation is reconstructed from the analysis of the development of Chinese characters and from rhymes in poetry.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A linguistic ancestor of the Chinese languages, spoken during roughly the first millennium BCE.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The reconstruction of Old Chinese depends on who does the reconstructing but there is no question that Old Chinese had interesting consonant clusters that would make Russian speakers feel right at home.

    Archive 2007-12-01 2007

  • Paleoglot: Fun with Old Chinese rhymes skip to main

    Fun with Old Chinese rhymes 2007

  • The reconstruction of Old Chinese depends on who does the reconstructing but there is no question that Old Chinese had interesting consonant clusters that would make Russian speakers feel right at home.

    Fun with Old Chinese rhymes 2007

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