Vernacular Languages

Chapter 4, “Vernacular Languages,” offers the second of two case studies in the ethnicization of cultural features of the Wuren. Using the results of modern linguistic studies, the chapter shows that the vernacular spoken languages of the Jiankang Empire have a substantial, perhaps predominant, non-Sinitic basis, most importantly in the Austro-Asiatic family (along with Mon and Khmer, among others). These languages were recognized as decisively foreign by people of the Central Plains. Within the empire, the polyglot linguistic situation in the fifth and sixth centuries was addressed by the use of one of two common spoken tongues, either Jiankang Elite vernacular (the most Sinitic language within the empire) for the educated class, or, to a much lesser but still significant extent, Chu vernacular among the military.