Shiqi dialect
Shiqi dialect is a dialect of Yue Chinese.[1] It is spoken by roughly 160,000 people in Zhongshan, Guangdong's Shiqi urban district. It differs slightly from Cantonese, mainly in its pronunciation and lexicon.[2]
Shiqi has the smallest number of tones of any Yue dialect, perhaps a Hakka influence (Lee 1993). They are:
-
| even |
rising |
going |
entering |
| ① ˥ 55 |
② ˥˩ 51 |
③ ˩˧ 13 |
⑤ ˨ 22 |
⑦a ˥ 5 |
⑧ ˨ 2 |
This appears to be due to mergers: the fact that entering tone has split oddly suggests that it has split twice, as in Cantonese and Taishanese, but that tone ⑦b subsequently merged with ⑧.
References