Zompist Bboard Again

For anyone with experience with Middle Chinese reconstructions, what would you say is the best/easiest to look into for conlang derivation purposes? In specific, I'd like a reconstruction that is easily converted to IPA representations of what the phonemes where assumed to be, especially the vowels.

I posted this in the CBB as well but didn't get any responses so I thought I'd try here. Though, it was also in random conlang stuff so I figured giving this its own thread might also help.?

I would also like an answer to this question, but I don't know myself, sorry.

I really have no idea which one is the best, but I found Baxter's serviceable enough.

I used it for bits and pieces of a fictional auxlang. So I didn't care too much about historical accuracy; the idea was to have forms that would be sort of familiar to modern speakers of various languages that descend or borrowed from MC.

My main problem with typical MC reconstructions is that they seem to have a yod in every syllable, which to me feels a bit suspect...

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 12:34 pm My main problem with typical MC reconstructions is that they seem to have a yod in every syllable, which to me feels a bit suspect...

Note that Baxter & Sagart explicitly say:

Our Middle Chinese notation is not to be understood as a reconstruction, however; rather, it is designed as a conventional, mnemonically convenient representation of the information found in the Middle Chinese written sources.

I like the forms given by Axel Shuessler... because they're conveniently collected in his etymological dictionary, which also contains Late Han and Old Chinese forms. I believe they're closely related to Baxter but not identical.

Someone wrote to me recently and suggested that Late Han forms are the best for conlangers. Riffling through Schuessler, I have to agree. They tend to be simpler, and they have lost some of the clusters and other things that make OC look more unusual. MC reconstructions probably get cumbersome because they're driven by the contradictory needs to reflect the rhyme tables and the results of the comparative method on the modern dialects. Given various problems with the rhyme tables (cf. Jerry Norman's book), the system is useful but probably doesn't correspond neatly to a particular historical dialect.

I'm looking over Axel Shuessler's "ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)" in PDF form and it does look very helpful for what I'm looking for. I suppose I can fall back on Baxter if I'm in a pinch. Thank you all for the replies!