A rime table or rhyme table is a syllable

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

 chart of the Chinese language

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

, a significant advance on the fǎnqiè

Fanqiè

In Chinese phonology, fanqie is a method to indicate the pronunciation of a character by using two other characters.-The Origin:...

analysis used in earlier rime dictionaries. As one of China's native phonological

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 models, it tabulates the syllables of Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...

 by their onsets, rime

Syllable rime

In the study of phonology in linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda. It is the part of the syllable used in poetic rhyme, and the part that is lengthened or stressed when a person elongates or stresses a word in speech.The rime is usually the...

s, grades of rime, tone

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...

s and other properties.

Tradition holds that rime tables were invented by Buddhist monks, who were inspired by the Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

 syllable charts in the Siddham script they used to study the language. The Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty

The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...

 Yunjing

Yunjing

The Yunjing is the oldest existing Chinese rime table. Current versions of the Yunjing date back to the 1161 and 1203 editions published by Zhang Linzhi ....

and Qiyin lüe

Qiyin lüe

The Qiyin lüe is a Chinese rime table that dates prior to 1161. This reference work survived to the present largely because the Song Dynasty historian Zheng Qiao included it in his 1161 encyclopedia Tongzhi .The Qiyinlüe has a close affinity with the Yunjing...

are the oldest extant rime tables. Based on numerous internal similarities, linguists conclude they shared a common prototype of phonological tables with accompanying texts, a tradition that may date back to the late Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

.

Structure

A rime table book consists of a number of tabular charts, each devoted to either the "open" (kāi 開) and "closed" (hé 合) part of a particular rime group (shè ).
The open/closed distinction is interpreted to indicate the absence or presence of lip rounding (often transcribed as -w- or -u-).
Each shè (攝) is characterized as either "inner" (nèi ) or "outer" (wài ), thought to be related to the vocalic heights contrasting close vowel

Close vowel

A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...

s and open vowel

Open vowel

An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...

s respectively.

The columns and rows of each table classify syllables using other features:

• The initial consonant (shēngmǔ 聲母 lit. "sound mother"). A syllable beginning with a vowel
  Vowel
  In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
  
   is considered to have a "zero initial". Initials are classified according to
  • place of articulation
    Place of articulation
    In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...
    
    : labials
    Labial consonant
    Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...
    
     (chún 脣 "lip"), alveolars
    Alveolar consonant
    Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
    
     (shé 舌 "tongue"), velars
    Velar consonant
    Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
    
     (yá 牙 "back tooth"), affricates
    Affricate consonant
    Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
    
     and sibilants
    Sibilant consonant
    A sibilant is a manner of articulation of fricative and affricate consonants, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the sharp edge of the teeth, which are held close together. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words sip, zip, ship, chip,...
    
     (chǐ 齒 "front tooth"), and gutturals (hóu 喉 "throat"). The values of the last category remain controversial.
  • phonation
    Phonation
    Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...
    
    : voiceless (qīng 清 "clear"), voiceless aspirated (cìqīng 次清 "secondary clear"), voiced (zhuó 濁 "muddy") or nasal
    Nasal consonant
    A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
    
     or liquid
    Liquid consonant
    In phonetics, liquids or liquid consonants are a class of consonants consisting of lateral consonants together with rhotics.-Description:...
    
     (qīngzhuó 清濁 "clear muddy").
• The tone
  Tone (linguistics)
  Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
  
   (shēngdiào 聲調 "sound intonation"), using the same four tone name
  Tone name
  In the Chinese and Vietnamese languages, tone names are the names given to the tones these languages use.*In Chinese, tone names are given in terms of the four tones, namely level , rising , departing , and entering , as well as dark and light , and high and low .* Standard Vietnamese has six...
  
  s as used in the Qieyun
  Qieyun
  The Qieyun is a Chinese rime dictionary, published in 601 CE during the Sui Dynasty. The title Qieyun literally means "cutting rimes" referring to the traditional Chinese fănqiè system of spelling, and is thus translatable as "Spelling Rimes."Lù Făyán was the chief editor...
  
  . These tones differ from the four tones of Modern Standard Chinese, though related tone systems are retained by many southern languages. In particular, syllables ending in stops (-p, -t or -k) were classified as the entering tone
  Entering tone
  A checked tone, commonly known by its Chinese calque entering tone , is one of four syllable types in the phonology in Middle Chinese which are commonly translated as tone. However, it is not a tone in the phonetic sense, but rather describes a syllable that ends in a stop consonant, such as p, t,...
  
   of the corresponding syllables with nasal endings (-m, -n or -ng).
• The least understood classification is the four děng (等 "class", "grade" or "group"), which Bernhard Karlgren
  Bernhard Karlgren
  Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren was a Swedish sinologist and linguist who pioneered the study of Chinese historical phonology using modern comparative methods...
  
   translated as "divisions" while other linguists prefer "grades". The exact nature of the grades is still open to debate, but is believed to describe palatalization
  Palatalization
  In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
  
   (transcribed as the presence or absence of -j- or -i-), retroflex
  Retroflex consonant
  A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...
  
   features, vowel quality (high vs. low) or some combination of these. The divisions or grades are usually denoted by roman numerals I to IV.

To illustrate the significance of děng, the science of classifying vowels is called děngyùn (等韻 "division rime") and traditional phonology is děngyùnxué (等韻學 "division rime study").

For example, the Yùnjìng comprises 43 charts covering 16 rime groups.
The following is the first chart (the Arabic numerals are modern annotations):





The five big characters on the right-hand side read Nèi zhuǎn dìyī kāi (內轉第一開). In Yùnjìng, each chart is called a zhuǎn (lit. "turn"). The characters indicate that the chart is the first (第一) one in the book, and that the syllables of this chart are "inner" (內) and "open" (開).

The 16 rows are grouped by tone into four yùn, or rimes distinguished by tone (represented by the level-toned 東, the rising-toned 董, the departing-toned 送, and the entering-toned 屋). Within each yùn is a row for each of the four grades. The symbol ○ indicates that there is no character with that particular syllable.

The pronunciation of a character can be determined by looking at such a chart. However, due to sound change

Sound change

Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...

, the traditional fǎnqiè

Fanqiè

In Chinese phonology, fanqie is a method to indicate the pronunciation of a character by using two other characters.-The Origin:...

spellings and the rime tables may become incongruous. In such cases some special rules, called menfa 門法, have been made to resolve the incongruities.

36 initials

Although the preface of Yunjing lists 36 onsets, the table contains only 23 columns, which means some columns represent more than one onset. This is possible because some onsets only combine with some particular grades of rime: say onset A only combines with grade 1 and 4, and onset B only with grade 2 and 3, then the same column can represent both onset A and B. This kind of space-saving representation can cause confusion, and results in so-called jiǎděng (假等 "pseudo-grade"): for example, a syllable shown to be grade-4 on the table is in fact grade-3, and finds itself at the grade-4 position only because the slot has been occupied by another syllable.

The 36 initials

		Tenuis Tenuis consonant In linguistics, a tenuis consonant is a stop or affricate which is unvoiced, unaspirated, and unglottalized. That is, it has a "plain" phonation like , with a voice onset time close to zero, as in Spanish p, t, ch, k, or as in English p, t, k after s .In transcription, tenuis consonants are not...	Aspirate Aspiration (phonetics) In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...	Voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...	Sonorant Sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; fricatives and plosives are not sonorants. Vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like and . Other consonants, like or , restrict the airflow enough to cause turbulence, and...	Tenuis	Voiced
Labials Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...		*[p]	*[pʰ]	*[b]	*[m]
		*[p̪]	*([p̪ʰ])	*([b̪])	*[ɱ]
Coronals Coronal consonant Coronal consonants are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal , domed , or subapical , as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such...		*[t]	*[tʰ]	*[d]	*[n]
		*[ʈ]	*[ʈʰ]	*[ɖ]	*[ɳ]
Sibilants		*[ts]	*[tsʰ]	*[dz]		*[s]	*[z]
		*[tɕ]	*[tɕʰ]	*[dʑ]		*[ɕ]	*[ʑ]
Velars Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....		*[k]	*[kʰ]	*[ɡ]	*[ŋ]
Gutturals Guttural consonant Guttural is a term used to describe any of several speech sounds whose primary place of articulation is near the back of the oral cavity. In some definitions this is restricted to pharyngeal consonants, but in others includes some but not all velar and uvular consonants...		*[ʔ]			*[j]	*[x]	*[ɣ]
""					*[l]
""					*[ɲ]

External links

• Rhyme Tables, Dylan W.H. Sung
• Yunjing: 36 Initials, Marjorie Chan