The book aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to the historical development of the Chinese language from its proto Sino-Tibetan roots in prehistoric time to Modern Standard Chinese. The content includes phonological change, grammatical development, lexical evolution, vernacular writing, Chinese characters and Modern Chinese dialects. It aims at readers of multiple disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, history and sociolinguistics.

The book has a reader-friendly approach and its clear style and neatly packed framework is certainly an advantage for such a complex project. Another plus is that it has a companion website, offering supplementary resources, answer keys and audio recordings of the sounds of Middle and Old Chinese.

The book is very well organized and well written. What I find troublesome about a book of this type, however, is that the project is too ambitious, aiming to cover so much in one volume of about 200 pages. It encompasses important themes such as prehistory Chinese; the sounds of old Chinese at the time of Confucius; Chinese poetry; sounds of early modern and modern Chinese; Modern Standard Chinese and the so-called dialects; Chinese philosophy in relation to classical Chinese; literature and religion in relation to vernacular writing; vocabulary change and the Chinese writing system. Any one of these themes deserves a handsome volume. To be comprehensive means that one has to say something about every aspect, but there is insufficient space to say anything in depth. The end result is that it is too elementary for an expert in the field, but too complex for a non-expert. I don't think this is the fault of the author. Rather it is increasingly required by some publishers to have fast-food versions of academic output.

I would also like to raise a number of scholarly queries. A syllable in modern Chinese usually consists of what is called the initial – usually a consonant – and what is called a final, which usually consists of vowels, or semi vowels. There are a very limited number of finals that end with a consonant in the language. I am a little puzzled as to why the author does not use the term “finals” while maintaining the term of “initials.” Instead, the term “rime” is used in the book. This might be related to the fact that the author calls the ancient qieyun dictionary a “riming dictionary,” a term questionable to the present reviewer.

I also have a problem with the statement that “Classical Chinese texts are written records of the spoken language in Old Chinese” (p. 80). We may have evidence of the sound of individual words, but we do not possess any record or evidence of what the spoken language was like in Old Chinese. What is unlikely is that Classical Chinese corresponded to the spoken language at that time. Classical Chinese is based on the one-syllable one-word structure. I really doubt the spoken Chinese at that time was the same as it had been recorded in written classical Chinese texts. When spoken, one-syllable one-word sentences in the form of classical Chinese would have been hardly comprehensible because it was so precise and so information packed. For any significant conversation to take place in a speaking and listening situation there is a need for redundant information in sentences so as to reduce the comprehension burden. For instance in modern standard spoken Chinese we have many words consisting of two syllables of the same meaning, such as 衣 yi and 服 fu. If we just say yi the listener would have to guess what it means. The same problem arises if we just say fu. But when we put yifu together, the listener is likely to understand it means “clothes” straightway. It is hard to conceive how people could communicate orally by using classical Chinese sentence structures.

Finally, a word about English translations of classical Chinese. The author uses James Legge's translation for the examples of classical Chinese sentences in the book. I have the feeling that the Legge versions of some classical texts are not necessarily very accurate.

In conclusion, this is a very approachable book written by a very competent author and teacher of Chinese. It could be used as an introduction book for first-year postgraduate students in the field of Chinese linguistics or those who want to embark on a career as a Chinese language teacher.