Eastern Han Chinese
| Eastern Han Chinese | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Later Han Chinese | |||||||||||
| Native to | China | ||||||||||
| Era | Eastern Han dynasty | ||||||||||
Early form | |||||||||||
| Clerical script | |||||||||||
| Language codes | |||||||||||
| ISO 639-3 | – | ||||||||||
| Glottolog | late1251 Late Han Chinese | ||||||||||
Provinces of the Han dynasty c. 189 AD | |||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 晚期上古漢語 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 晚期上古汉语 | ||||||||||
| Literal meaning | Late Old Chinese | ||||||||||
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Eastern Han Chinese, or Later Han Chinese, is the stage of the Chinese language attested in poetry and glosses from the Eastern Han period (1st–3rd centuries AD). It is considered an intermediate stage between Old Chinese and the Middle Chinese of the 7th-century Qieyun rime dictionary. Min varieties are thought to be descended from southeastern dialects of this period.
Schuessler (2009) remarks that Later Han Chinese, as reconstructed by him, "could, with hindsight, be considered Middle Han Chinese of the first centuries BC and AD".