Talk:Tabgach

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The name is not derived from Tuoba; in fact, the Chinese characters which are now pronounced Tuoba in the modern variety of Beijing Mandarin were used to represent the good old Tabgach pronunciation. These Chinese characters were pronounced something like *tak-bat in Early Middle Chinese, the Chinese language as spoken around 601 C.E. (see Edwin G. Pulleyblank). This was the best Early Middle Chinese phonotactics could do to accomodate the Tabgach form. If you like to put it in prescriptive terms, the Chinese language "corrupted" the Tabgach pronunciation. -Andrew

It should be mentioned that the Tabgach spoke a Para-Mongolic language which was related to Kitan (Khitan), the language of the founders of the Liao dynasty. And it is also worth mentioning that they had their own script (possibly an ancestor of the Kitan scripts), although unfortunately no extant texts remain. -Andrew