Hi,

My name is Wayne Wei Yu, Tan and I'm a senior at Dartmouth College majoring in Linguistics modified with Russian.

While working on the origins and language of the Volga Tatars during my junior year, I chanced upon articles on the history of conquest dynasties in China and the types of scripts that were developed.  Fascinated by the possibilities for research, I shifted my focus from Russian Eurasia to Northeast China.

I've just completed a thesis on the Khitan language and scripts funded by the college.  This year-long thesis was supervised by Prof. Whaley, Prof. Crossley and Prof. Mowry from Dartmouth College and Prof. Nie from CASS.
 
I discuss the problems in reconstructing the genetic affiliation of the Khitan language and suggest why early Chinese dynastic annals on the predynastic history of the Khitans can sometimes be unreliable sources.  I examine the reasons for the invention of the Khitan scripts and show how they were symbolic of the Khitans' political authority.  Finally, through the analysis of Chinese transliterations of Middle Mongol and Jurchen words, I outline how phonemes in Khitan could have been represented in texts.  I apply these results in deciphering the Khitan script characters and propose a modest partial reconstruction of the Khitan language.