Old Chinese

Formerly spoken in

• Sino-Tibetan Chinese languages

As an ancient Chinese (also archaic Chinese) is generally referred to the Chinese language of the Zhou dynasty in the period before 256 BC, the definition varies depending on the perspective.

In the historical phonology of Chinese is with " ancient Chinese " that stage of development of language refers whose phonology is tangible in the rhymes of the Shi Jing and in the most ancient characters of Chinese script, while from a syntactic perspective, the entire language until the beginning of the Qin Dynasty is grouped together under this name. The oldest form of Chinese is found in the oracle bone inscriptions from the later Shang Dynasty. From the early or Western Zhou Dynasty ( 11th century BC - 771 BC ) and the time of the Spring and Autumn Annals ( to 481 BC) both inscriptions, especially on bronze vessels, as well as first literary works such as the collection of poems of the Shi Jing and the older parts of the Shujing. The last stage of the ancient Chinese is the classical Chinese, the language of the time of the Warring States period (5th - 3rd century BC), which until modern times, was used as a literary language.

By some syntactic properties of the ancient Chinese is distinguished from its successor, the Central Chinese. There are, however, also differences within the ancient Chinese. It originally had a copula惟,唯,隹,维wéi that the importance in Classical Chinese was "only" reduced. Conversely, as the conjunction而ér "then" an innovation of recent ancient Chinese dar.