Hangzhou dialect

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The Hangzhou dialect (traditional Chinese: 杭州話; simplified Chinese: 杭州话; pinyin: hángzhōuhuà) is spoken in the city of Hangzhou and its immediate suburbs, but excluding areas further away from Hangzhou such as Xiāoshān (蕭山) and Yúháng (余杭) (both originally county-level cities and now the districts within Hangzhou City). The number of speakers of the Hangzhou dialect has been estimated to be about 1.2 to 1.5 million. It belongs to the Wu language family, which in turn constitutes one of the Sinitic language families. The Hangzhou dialect is of immense interest to Chinese historical phonologists and dialectologists because phonologically, it exhibits extensive similarities with the other Wu languages; however, grammatically and lexically, it shows many Mandarin tendencies. (Simmons 1995)

Contents

[edit] Classification

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[edit] Geographic distribution

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[edit] Dialects

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[edit] Phonetics and phonology

[edit] Consonants

Consonants of Hangzhou dialect
  bilabial labio-dental alveolar alveolo-palatal velar glottal
nasal m   n ɲ ŋ  
plosives voiced b   d   g  
voiceless unaspirated p   t   k ʔ
voiceless aspirated pʰ   tʰ   kʰ  
fricatives voiced   v z     ɦ
voiceless   f s ɕ   h
affricates voiced     dz dʑ    
voiceless unaspirated     ts tɕ    
voiceless aspirated     tsʰ tɕʰ  
approximants   ʋ ɹ      
lateral approximants     l    

[edit] Vowels

[edit] Monophthongs

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[edit] Diphthongs

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[edit] Triphthongs

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[edit] Syllable structure

[edit] Onsets

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[edit] Rimes

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[edit] Tones

[edit] Citation tones

The Hangzhou tonal system is similar to that of the Suzhou dialect, in that some characters of the shàng tone in Middle Chinese have merged with the modern yīn qù tone.

Tone chart of Hangzhou dialect
Tone number Tone name Tone letters Description
1 yin ping (陰平) ˧˨˧ (323) mid dipping
2 yang ping (陽平) ˨˩˨ (212) low dipping
3 shang (上) ˥˩ (51) falling
4 yin qu (陰去) ˧˦ (334) mid rising
5 yang qu (陽去) ˩˧ (113) low rising
6 yin ru (陰入) ˥ʔ (55) high checked
7 yang ru (陽入) ˩˨ʔ (12) low checked

[edit] Tone sandhi

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[edit] Grammar

[edit] Morphology

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[edit] Syntax

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[edit] Vocabulary

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[edit] History

The most important event to impact on Hangzhou's dialect was its establishment as Ling'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. When the Northern Song Dynasty was conquered by the Jin Dynasty in 1127, large numbers of northern refugees fled to what is now Hangzhou, speaking predominently Mandarin of the Henan variety. Within 30 years, contemporary accounts record that immigrants outnumbered natives in Hangzhou. This resulted in Mandarin influences in the pronunciation, lexicon and grammar of the Hangzhou dialect.

Further influence by Mandarin occurred after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1912. The local Manchu garrisons were dissolved, adding significant numbers of Beijing dialect Mandarin speakers to the population.

Because of the frequent commerce and intercourse between Hangzhou and Shaoxing, the Hangzhou dialect is also influenced by the Shaoxing dialect.

[edit] Examples

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[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Qián,nǎiróng (1992). Dāngdài Wúyǔ yánjiū. (Contemporary Wu linguistics studies). Shànghǎi: shànghǎi jiāoyù chūbǎnshè. (錢乃榮. 1992. 當代吳語研究. 上海敎育出版社) ISBN 7-5320-2355-9

[edit] External links

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