During the Eastern Han Dynasty, a large number of scholars took this as a position to carry out cultural activities, set up museums and teach students. Among them, the most prominent scholars are Chen Yuan and Shi Xie. Known as "Linghai Confucianism", Chen Yuan returned to Guangxin to run a school in his later years and became one of the pioneers of Lingnan culture. Shangxie served as the magistrate of Jiaotoe County for more than 40 years and was once the "Governor of Seven Counties". Many scholars in the Central Plains have come to attach themselves to his name, and they take traveling, crossing toes and giving lectures as their profession. What these literati used to spread China culture in the Central Plains was, of course, the elegant words with Chinese characters as the recording symbols. While learning China culture and Chinese characters, the aborigines also learned elegant characters. The languages of these aborigines are very different. They can't communicate with each other and have no written language. Therefore, in addition to using elegance in communication with Han people, tribes also use elegance in communication. In this way, Ya Yan has become a homophonic sound of various indigenous tribes, just like Ya Yan was used in the contacts of various vassal States in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, forming a bilingual system, using one's own mother tongue in one's own tribe and using Ya Yan in foreign exchanges. However, this kind of elegant speech has lost the characteristics of appealing to both refined and popular tastes because it has absorbed a large number of Baiyue words. At the same time, many factors in ancient Baiyue language were also absorbed by the languages of Han immigrants, thus gradually forming a Baiyue dialect-Cantonese.
At the beginning of the formation of Cantonese, the difference between Cantonese and Central Plains Chinese was very obvious. After the Jin Dynasty, there was the "Five Chaos in China", followed by the partition of the north and the south for more than 200 years. The entry of nomadic people in the north has brought great impact to the culture and language of the Central Plains. Since the Zhou Dynasty, it has gradually developed into a national language. Here it is. During this period, the Lingnan region maintained a relatively stable situation, and Cantonese, which evolved from indigenous languages, did not change as much as Central Plains Chinese, and maintained its original phonology. As Professor Li Rulong said; "The differentiation of initial consonants of medieval affricates, the confluence of nasal vowels, the weakening and shedding of initial consonants of affricates, and the three tones of voiced sounds and entering tones are common in many dialects, but they are all rejected by Cantonese." Therefore, Yayan has developed into modern Mandarin and Mandarin in today's North and Central Plains, while Cantonese retains a lot of indigenous factors.
The stop sound in Fengchuan dialect: a living fossil of early Cantonese