Northern customary speech prohibited at court

The Wei shu basic annals record that in the sixth lunar month of Taihe 19 (AD 495), on jihai, an edict prohibited using the language of northern custom at court and prescribed removal from office for violations.

What this does and does not establish

The Wei shu is an official history compiled in 551–554 under the Northern Qi from Northern Wei records; the English is an AI working translation. The wording follows 北俗之語言 without assigning a more specific language name, and records a court prohibition rather than its enforcement.

  • Read through an AI working translation.
Region
East Asia
Theme
Politics and institutions
Kind of record
Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.

How it is dated

Date reference
太和 19 (太和十九年 as numbered by the annals), lunar month 6
How we use it
Year assigned from the lunar month under which the Wei shu annals enter the item; the sexagenary day was not converted to a Julian day.

The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.

Dating notes from the research record

Lunar month 6 of 太和 19 = Julian 495-07-08 to 495-08-06, per Academia Sinica 兩千年中西曆轉換 year table(s) 太和19.html (sha256 6221d6dc2e12…); the whole month lies in AD 495.

File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.

Sources and quoted text

Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.

Source 1 · Supports the statement

Wei shu (Book of Wei), basic annals

Wei Shou (魏收), Northern Qi court historian

Location
zh.wikisource page 魏書/卷7下, revision 2460667 (2024-10-13T12:14:07Z), raw wikitext (transcription with the modern Zhonghua shuju collation notes as <ref> footnotes); line 221; chars 9990-10018
Edition
zh.wikisource page 魏書/卷7下, revision 2460667 (2024-10-13T12:14:07Z), raw wikitext (transcription with the modern Zhonghua shuju collation notes as <ref> footnotes)
About the work
Compiled 551-554 (Northern Qi) from Northern Wei court records; several juan lost by the Song and restored from other works
Accessed
2026-11-05

Open the source

The credit or link shown here was corrected after an audit of the retained source.

Quoted text (Classical Chinese)

六月己亥,詔不得以北俗之語言於朝廷,若有違者,免所居官。

AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative

In the sixth month, on jihai, an edict prohibited using the language of northern custom at court; anyone who violated this was to be removed from the office held.

Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Source: Wei shu, juan 7下, zh.wikisource transcription (revision 2460667). English renderings are AI working translations, not published translations.

Exact source version128dae426cb9626039c5891bd22ef20cbef06a3d725877c783c245dfd136782e

Checks and changes

Source checked 2026-11-05. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked

No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.

Revision s1h_495_wei_1

Exact revision fingerprint5a01ffde6f723f4367c301697c34ad14daf7b248f07c5ecd626f4bf559057afb

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