Comparative Chart of Ancient Initials
Compiled by James Campbell

Each historical phonologist has their own version of the reconstruction of Middle Chinese based on their research. Chinese dictionaries that first appeared with pronunciations (601 AD) did not have any alphabetic system to proscribe pronunciation to the characters, but instead assigned single Chinese characters to represent the sounds. These characters represented onset consonants, final rhymes, tones, and some grouped features such as voicing. By using the extensive cross-referenced data and use of these representative characters from these dictionaries, historical phonologists have been able to assign international phonetic alphabet (IPA) values to these characters. But each researcher's mapping to IPA is slightly different.

Bernhard Karlgren was one of the first researchers to assign phonetic alphabet values to the phonetic-compound Chinese characters (Etudes sur la Phonologie Chinoise, published 1914). His numerous works have been widely accepted and laid a foundation for further research. Researchers since then have amended and corrected the many flaws found in Karlgren's works, so that although Karlgren is widely known for his great achievements, his mappings are no longer an authoritative source.

What Karlgren called Ancient Chinese we now refer to as Middle Chinese, this newer term very widely accepted now. In addition, what he called Archaic Chinese, we now call Ancient Chinese. Note these terms have not changed in Chinese: ??(?) and ??(?).

The following charts show the characters used in Middle Chinese across the top, with each researcher's name listed down the left side, with their phonetic mappings (I say this because there was no standard IPA in Karlgren's day) in the chart. Please note the following Chinese names of western researchers: ??? (Karlgren), ??? (Pulleyblank).

Data in the first two tables come from ??????? (Hanyu Lishi Yinyunxue) as listed in the source material.

Here is Mantarō Hashimoto's reconstruction: