Jian'ou_dialect

Jian'ou dialect

Jian'ou dialect

Dialect of Northern Min Chinese

The Jian'ou dialect (Northern Min: Gṳ̿ing-é-dī / 建甌事; Chinese: simplified Chinese: 建瓯话; traditional Chinese: 建甌話; pinyin: Jiàn'ōuhuà), also known as Kienow dialect, is a local dialect of Northern Min Chinese spoken in Jian'ou in northern Fujian province. It is regarded as the standard common language in Jian'ou.

Quick Facts Pronunciation, Native to ...
Quick Facts Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese ...
Bible in Jian'ou Romanised (Genesis), published by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Phonetics and phonology

According to The Eight Tones of Kien-chou (建州八音), a rime dictionary published in 1795, the Jian'ou dialect had 15 initials, 34 rimes and 7 tones in the 18th century, however there are only 6 tones in the modern dialect as the "light level" (陽平) tone has disappeared.

Initials

More information Bilabial, Alveolar ...

Rimes

More information Open syllable, Nasal coda ...

Tones

Jian'ou has four tones, which are reduced to two in checked syllables.

More information Tone number, Tone name ...

The entering tones in the Jian'ou dialect do not have any entering tone coda (入聲韻尾) such as /-ʔ/, /-p̚/, /-t̚/ and /-k̚/ which makes it distinct from many other Chinese varieties.

Notes

  1. Min is believed to have split from Old Chinese, rather than Middle Chinese like other varieties of Chinese.[1][2][3]

References

  1. [1]
    Mei, Tsu-lin (1970), "Tones and prosody in Middle Chinese and the origin of the rising tone", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30: 86–110, doi:10.2307/2718766, JSTOR 2718766
  2. [2]
    Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1984), Middle Chinese: A study in Historical Phonology, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, p. 3, ISBN 978-0-7748-0192-8
  3. [3]
    Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (2023-07-10). "Glottolog 4.8 - Min". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7398962. Archived from the original on 2023-10-13. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
  4. [4]
    /e/ tends to merge to [ɪ]
  5. [5]
    /o/ tends to merge to [ʊ]
  6. [6]
    /oŋ/ which is mentioned in Kienning Colloquial Romanized has merged into /ɔŋ/ in the modern dialect.
  7. [7]
    /ieiŋ/ is not mentioned in Kienning Colloquial Romanized as it diverged from /iŋ/ after the romanization system was established.
  8. [8]
    /yɛ/ tends to merge into /uɛ/.
  9. [9]
    /yiŋ/ tends to merge into /uiŋ/.

Sources

  • Beijing daxue Zhongguo yuyan wenxue xi yuyanxue jiaoyanshi 北京大學中國語言文學系語言學教研室 (1989). Hànyǔ fāngyīn zìhuì 漢語方音字匯 (in Chinese). Beijing: Wenzi gaige chubanshe.
  • Yuan, Jiahua 袁家驊 (1989). Hànyǔ fāngyán gàiyào 漢語方言概要 [An Introduction to Chinese Dialects] (in Chinese). Beijing: Wenzi gaige chubanshe.
  • Jianou Xian difangzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui 建瓯县地方志编纂委员会 (1994). Jiànōu xiànzhì 建瓯县志 [Chorography of Jian'ou County]. Vol. 36. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. ISBN 7-101-01283-3. Archived from the original on 2018-04-07. Retrieved 2018-04-06.
  • Lien, Chinfa (1990). "Competing Final Systems in the Jian'ou Dialect" (PDF). Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies. 20 (1): 1–53.
  • Norman, Jerry (2002) [1988]. Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29653-6.
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