Abstract: Zhang Taiyan, the master of traditional Chinese phonology in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, not only contributed greatly to the classification of vowels of Chinese, but also made a lot of discoveries in the initial consonants of archaic Chinese. Zhang's research, based on Qian Daxin's, had his own features. In his research on archaic initial consonants of Chinese, Zhang for the first time advanced the twenty-one initial consonants system, and explicated their relationship. Zhang's research on the archaic initial consonants of Chinese formed an integral system with his research on archaic vowels of Chinese. Zhang's theory of "the origin of Chinese Language" and of "the borrowing and transforming of Chinese words",and his researches on Chinese phonology together laid a foundation for etymology theory research and for his later works on the origin of words.

Key words: Zhang Taiyan, the initial consonants, archaic Chinese pronunciation, Chinese phonology, the consonant system, variation of pronunciation