1. Principal Vowel = yunfu
Huayiyiyu, a Chinese corpus to study Asian languages in the 15C – 16C KIM, Ji-eun Department of Korean Linguistics and Literature, Seoul National University
In a Nutshell
This study is a humble suggestion to try a new way to study Historical Phonology of Asian languages by revisiting Huayiyiyu (華夷譯語) , Chinese-Barbarian dictionary published to train official interpreters in the 15th – 16th centuries.
Method
Huayiyiyu is considered to have a system of phonetic notation just like IPA. The characters were used with different phonetic values from those used to mnemonically record Chinese language. Therefore, this study examines the phonetic value and system of each ‘Chinese phoneme’ used in Huayiyiyu by following four steps:
Step 1. Digitize the second row (native words in the target language) of Huayiyiyu aligned with its yinxi (音系) information.
Unified characters: Characters were coherently typed in the traditional version, unifying the different varieties for better comparison.
Structure of the digitized data
Indices: Indices included the information of the order of the entry in the original text and the position of the letter in the entry (A: Word-initial, B: Word-medial, C: Word-final).
Rows: Every character was allocated to different row.
Columns: Columns were used to allocate indexical numbers and align the characters with the information of Chinese phonology and its reconstruction in IPA.
Step 2. Selected and appended reliable* reconstructions on each word list (language) into the dataset from Step 1.
* reliable?
1. Did it reconstruct the entire chapter (language)?
2. Did it reconstruct the phonetic value of the entries? 
3. Did it carefully consider the phonology of the target language as well
as that of Chinese?
* Digitized Huayiyiyu from Step 1 and Step 2
Step 3. Find out transcription principles based on the phonology of Chinese and target languages.
Step 4. Reconstruct the phonetic value of each phoneme based on the examined principles.
Results
Reliable studies were selected and compiled, which will be published and shared after enough analysis and publications.
The Transcription rules of Huayiyiyu are as below:
Rule 1. The morphemes were transcribed phonetically instead of phonemically.
Rule 2. each morpheme was transcribed in the same manner for each of the wordlist.
Rule 3. Elements which do not fit into the Chinese syllable structure can be the object of Supplementary Transcription (ST) i.e. the first element of consonant clusters or –l/ p/ t/ k at the coda :
Rule 4. Elements were STed only when a) voiced, b) constituent or c) released sound. Otherwise, the sound was just dropped without any ST.
Rule 5. Phonetic scope of yinxi transcribed in the Huayiyiyu was:
Background
Historical Linguistics has been relying on comparative method and internal method (Shields, 2010), while they have considerable limitations at the same time.
The comparative method has relative temporal limitations, sociohistorical limitations, linguistic domain limitations, and “delicacy” limitations (Harrison, 2008).
The internal method shares the limitation of the comparative methods, when the gap between orthography and phonology could be another problem when adopting the data from a single language. It is because the orthography of a language is not the exact transcription, but the mnemonic of a language (Lass, 2015).
However, there has been little study on new methods to overcome the limitations of these two primary methods.
Name
Function
Standard ST
Marking the coda of the word. Standard usage of ST.
Substitute ST
Partially substituting either the meaning or the sound of the preceding character.
Additional ST
Marking the particles such as endings and postpositions.
Confirming ST
Confirming the coda of a word. It is when the word could be identified by other characters, but an ST was added to reassure the meaning or sound of the target word.
Data
“Huayiyiyu (華夷譯語)” is a general term that indicates the dictionaries between the Chinese language and neighboring foreign languages published by Chinese government between early Ming (明) dynasty and Middle Qing (淸) dynasty:
Chosen Huayiyiyu transcribes 12 different spoken languages* in Asia in Chinese characters, including either disappeared or endangered languages such as Cham and Jurchen.
Each entry has either two or three rows: 
Most of the chapters in HY can be considered to reflect Late Ming Guanhua due to three reasons: 1) the location of huitongguan. 2) missing erhua (兒化) 3) and –p/ t/ k (入聲):
The third class was
chosen to study
the phonetic value of the target languages.
Publisher
Target lang.
Transcription
Variety
Era
Huoyuanjie,
Mashayihei, etc.
Mongolian
Chinese
characters
Written
14th
Siyiguan
Mongolian, Jurchen,
Tibetan, Persian, Uighur,
Burmese, Thai, Sanskrit,
Tai
+ original script
Huitongguan
Tibetan, Persian,
Uighur, Burmese, Thai,
Korean, Ryukyuan,
Japanese, Vietnamese, Cham, Shan
Spoken
15- 16th
Huitongsiyiguan
(36 languages)
17th
`First row
`the meaning of the entry
Second row
the phonetic value of
native words
in the target language
Discussion
This study a) partially overcomes the limitations of existing methods, b) enables languages with few historical resources to be studied in Historical Phonology, c) creates synergy between historical studies on each language, and d) can be applied to study the disappeared, endangered, or underdocumented languages.
However, we need to further work on a) sharing the dataset to be edited by the historical linguists of each language and b) confirming phonological stability of each language.
Third row
the phonetic value of
Sino words
in the target language
References
Harrison, S. P. (2003). On the limits of the comparative method. The handbook of historical linguistics, 213, 243.
Lass, R. (2015). Interpreting Alphabetic Orthographies. In The Oxford handbook of historical phonology.
Shields, K. (2010). Linguistic Typology and Historical Linguistics. In The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Typology.
Initial = shengmu
Tone = shengdiao
Medial = yuntou
Principal Vowel = yunfu
Ending = yunwei