From Middle Chinese to seven Chinese languages

A. This kind of change has happened to create new languages all over the world. For example, it is often said that there are many Chinese “dialects,” as if Mandarin and Cantonese were as similar as American and British English. But actually, these varieties are separate languages, as different from one another as the Romance languages. Only the fact that they are written with the same writing system gives them the appearance of being “the same language.”

B. Below is the word for daughter-in-law in seven of the Chinese languages. The strange-looking c is pronounced approximately like ch. Notice how the consonants and vowels have changed in various directions. Also, the dash and apostrophe symbols over the vowels stand for the tones, and even these have changed in many of the words over time.