Before the Qin and Han dynasties, the country was not unified and the language was complicated, so I certainly couldn't understand it. The language of Han and Jin dynasties is close to the current Hakka dialect; Sui and Tang languages are close to Ganzhou dialect; The language of Song Dynasty is close to Wu dialect; There was basically no problem after the Yuan Dynasty. The vernacular in the novels at the end of Yuan Dynasty is the words of ordinary people now, and its pronunciation is close to that of Henan now. The Qing dynasty was basically the same as it is now.

In fact, due to the incompleteness of integration of language, even now, dialects in different regions cannot be directly understood.

In addition, ancient Chinese is not an isolated and static thing, but constantly changing. ? Academics have long known that "alto is different from tangyin, tangyin is different from songyin, and songyin is different from Ming and Qing dynasties". For example, the word "ge" in modern Chinese originally belongs to Altai language family, not Sino-Tibetan language family. It did not exist in ancient Chinese, but the words "brother" and "elder brother" were obviously brought in by the integration of Xianbei, Di and other ethnic minorities belonging to Altai language family.

How old is this ancient man? People in Ming and Qing dynasties can listen to Mandarin. If it is the Tang and Song Dynasties, it is good to understand it generally. Compared with the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, the Xianbei of Chinese has become the standard, and then the Altai languages such as Qidan, Turkic and Jurchen were mixed. Therefore, from the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Tang and Song Dynasties, Chinese pronunciation was a medieval language. The Han people who moved south in the Eastern Jin Dynasty will still retain the Chinese pronunciation in the Qin and Han Dynasties. There should be a big difference in pronunciation between north and south.

Before Qin and Han Dynasties, it was the pronunciation of ancient Chinese. The pronunciation of Chinese characters is basically disyllabic or polysyllabic, just like English, just like the pronunciation of Chinese now. Just like people who speak Mandarin today can't understand Minnan, Hakka and Cantonese at all. Only writing and communication.

Chinese characters are characterized by fixed writing, or generally little change, but ever-changing pronunciation.