Sergei Yakhontov

Who is Sergei Yakhontov?

Sergey E. Yakhontov is a Russian linguist, an expert on Chinese, comparative, and general linguistics. He was the son of the astronomer Natalia Sergeyevna Yakhontova. In 1950, he graduated from the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad State University. In 1962–1963 he underwent a training at Beijing and later on visited Nanyang University from 1971 to 1972. He teaches at the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg State University.

Yakhontov studied under Alexander Dragunov and developed many ideas of his teacher, in fact creating the Leningrad school of Sino-Tibetan linguistics. He published dozens of articles, many of them being translated into English, Chinese and Japanese. In particular, he made major contributions to Old Chinese phonology, proposing the *l medial and a rounded vowel *o, which led to the six vowel system that is now accepted by most researchers.