Origin of Gaozhou Yue language

Introduction

This article seek to explore the origin of the Gaozhou/Kochow (高州) Yue language in south-western Guangdong and also Danzhou language in northern Hainan. These languages are part of the Han Chinese Yue languages.

Homeland

The homeland of the Gaozhou Yue Chinese people is along the Jian River basin in south-western Guangdong.

In ancient times, most of the Jian River basin was under ancient Gaoliang (高涼) prefecture. Gaoliang prefecture took its name from the nearby Gaoliang mountain.

In 527 AD, the (Han Chinese) Liang dynasty started collecting taxes from the native Hlai people in Gaoliang commandery which led to a war between Hlai people and the Han Chinese. At that time, there was more than 100,000 Hlai families under the command of the Hlai Sin family in western Guangdong which was about the same number as the Han Chinese families in the same region.

In 535 AD, Lady Sin/Xian (冼夫人) agreed to marry ethnic Han Chinese Fung Bao (馮寶), the governor of Gaoliang prefecture in order to promote harmony between the Han Chinese and Hlai people. This union later became the most powerful family in western Guangdong who controlled not only the local Han Chinese but also the various Hlai chieftains.

Fung Bao marrying a native Lady Sin

Ancient Gaozhou city established in 528 AD was the linguistic and cultural center for Gaoliang prefecture.

Original homeland

Prince Fung Yeh (馮業), who was the remnant of the royal family of the Northern Yan (燕) kingdom (407-436 AD), and his followers migrated to south-western Guangdong soon after their state was annexed in 436 AD. Northern Yan state was situated in modern-day Liaoning province.

Migration via sea-route

Fung Bao, the governor of Gaoliang prefecture, was the descendant of this royal family.

It is not known whether there was already a large number of people from Guangxin (modern-day Wuzhou 梧州), who speak Western Yue language, residing in Gaoliang prefecture before this new batch of Han Chinese came.

Migration to Hainan

During 535-544 AD, Lady Sin led her mainly Han Chinese army from Gaozhou and Wuzhou to establish a military base in Yazhou (崖州) (modern-day Danzhou 儋州) to administer Hainan island.

The Chinese army in Danzhou were the earliest Han Chinese who migrated to Hainan before the arrival of the Southern Min people from Fujian during the Song dynasty. Their descendants are the Danzhou Yue speaking people in Hainan.

Danzhou Yue dance

Migration of Southern Min people

Ancient Luozhou (古羅洲) was established in 531 AD. Luozhou includes today's Wuchuan (吳川), Huazhou (化州) and Botou (坡頭). Luozhou was also once ruled by Fung Bao's grandson so the language would be very similar to proto-Gaozhou language and also due to its proximity to ancient Gaozhou.

In 1376 AD (Ming dynasty), Huazhou was moved to Gaozhou super-prefecture.

The migration of some Southern Min people during Southern Song dynasty to Luozhou resulted in a new Yue language called Wu-Hua Yue (吳化).

Wu-Hua Yue could be seen as an ancient Luozhou language that was influenced by a Southern Min language.

(Refer to 'Origin of Leizhou language' in this blog for more details)

Language classification

The current classification puts Gaozhou language and Yangjiang language under the Gaoyang branch of Yue Chinese.

Linguistic regions of Guangdong

This region roughly corresponds to the ancient Gaoliang prefecture which includes modern-day Maoming (茂名) prefecture and Yang-Jiang (陽江) prefecture.

Maoming prefecture and modern-day Wuchuan county (of Zhanjiang prefecture) were traditionally Gaozhou language speakers.

Yang-Jiang prefecture were traditionally Yangjiang language speakers.

Ancient Gaoliang prefecture

This is a proposed detailed classification of the Gaoyang languages after looking at their origin and linguistic characteristics.

More research needs to be done to determine whether the ancient Northern Yan language or the Western Yue language was more dominant in Gaoliang prefecture; in order to determine the basis of the proto-Gaozhou language.

Suppose the Western Yue language was more dominant, then proto-Gaozhou would be descended from Western Yue, the Chinese language spoken during Han dynasty in Lingnan, and it would be a sister branch to Gou Lou/Ngau Lau branch.

Comparison with other Yue languages

1. Unlike Cantonese and Seiyap which descended from Middle Chinese, the Gaoyang languages descended from Old Chinese and has Old Chinese phonology and cognates.

English	Chinese	Gaozhou	Hokkien	Cantonese
Know	知	Ti	Ti	Tsi
Do not know	無知	Mau Ti	Bo Ti	Mm Tsi

2. The Gaoyang languages also have short and long vowel pairs which is also characteristic of other Yue Chinese branches such as Eastern Yue and Western Yue Chinese languages. For example, Gaozhou language has [a:]&[a], [i:]&[i] long & short vowel pairs. Note that Seiyap doesn't have this linguistic characteristic.

3. Gaoyang languages have the alveolar lateral fricative initial consonant [ɬ] that is absent in Cantonese.

English	Chinese	Gaozhou	Cantonese
Star	星	ɬing	sing

4. The Danzhou Yue language was influenced by the Ong-Be language in Hainan after their migration to Hainan. It has some of the initial consonant changes also seen in Hainanese Min language.

English	Chinese	Cantonese	Danzhou Yue	Hainanese Min
Sky	天	tʰin	hen	hinn
Water	水	soei	tui	tui

This is a video of Danzhou Yue language versus Cantonese language.

Conclusion

Gaoyang languages descended from the proto-Gaozhou language in south-western Guangdong in early 6th century AD.

Puppet show in Gaozhou

Sources

https://kknews.cc/history/l84ejqe.html
https://kknews.cc/other/8643mzn.html
https://kknews.cc/history/nm2obe2.html
https://kknews.cc/history/9j5r8y8.html
https://kknews.cc/history/gg63gg8.html
https://kknews.cc/zh-hk/history/9j5r8y8.amp
https://kknews.cc/culture/3n8vb63.html
https://kknews.cc/culture/bqzzmeo.html
The history of formation of Wu-Hua Yue language. By Li Jian (Humanities school, Lingnan Normal University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong).

East Asian origin, history, language, culture

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