| Wenzhou | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 溫州話 | ||||
| Spoken in | Wenzhou Prefecture, Zhejiang, China | |||
| Region | Southeastern China, and in Wenzhou immigrant populations in New York City; Paris; Milan and Prato, Italy | |||
| Ethnicity | Wenzhounese (Han Chinese) | |||
| Native speakers | 5 million est. (date missing) | |||
| Language family | ||||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | – | |||
| Linguist List | wuu-ouj | |||
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Wenzhounese (simplified Chinese: 温州话; traditional Chinese: 溫州話; pinyin: wēnzhōuhuà) or Oujiang (simplified Chinese: 瓯江话; traditional Chinese: 甌江話; pinyin: ōujiānghuà) is the speech of Wenzhou, the southern prefecture of Zhejiang Province, China. It is the most divergent division of Wu Chinese, and is sometimes considered a separate language. It features noticeable elements of Min, which borders it to the south. Oujiang is sometimes used as the broad umbrella term, reserving Wenzhou for Wenzhounese proper in sensu stricto.
Wenzhou is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Wu neighboring it to the north and west, let alone with Min Dong to the south or with the official language of China, Mandarin.
Due to its long history and the geographical features of the region on which it is located, Wenzhou Chinese is so eccentric in its phonology that it has the reputation of being the "least comprehensible dialect" for an average Mandarin speaker. It preserves some vocabulary from classical Chinese lost elsewhere, and has noticeable grammatical differences from Mandarin.
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The linguistic mosaic that makes up China is especially diverse in Zhejiang province, where Wenzhou is located. Wenzhou is further divided into many dialects. When people refer to the standard Wenzhou dialect, they usually mean the language spoken by the people living in more developed areas of Wenzhou, i.e. Lucheng, Ouhai, Longwan, Yongjia, Ruian, and Yueqing, though they may be referring to Oujiang as a whole. Over five million people speak dialects of Oujiang/Wenzhou that are mutually intelligible, but differences are marked, with sound systems changing almost comprehensively every ten kilometers, especially in rural areas. People from Taizhou, who speak the Wu dialect which borders Wenzhou to the north, cannot comprehend Wenzhou.
Due to its high degree of eccentricity, the language is reputed to have been used during the Second Sino-Japanese War during wartime communication. Due to its unique grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, the language is basically impossible for any non-local to understand.
There is a common variation of the "fearless" rhymed saying in China that reflect this comprehension difficulty: "Fear neither the heavens nor the earth [i.e. dread nothing], but be afraid of hearing a person from Wenzhou speak in their local tongue." (天不怕，地不怕，就怕温州人説温州話)
Wenzhounese is spoken primarily in Wenzhou and the surrounding southern portion of Zhejiang Province of China. To a lesser extent, it is also spoken in scattered pockets of Fujian Province in Southeastern China. Overseas, it is spoken in increasingly larger communities in Flushing Chinatown and Brooklyn Chinatown, New York City, USA;[1][2][3] historically, there has also been a Wenzhounese-speaking community in Paris, France.
Oujiang (Dong'ou) 甌江 (東甌)
The most important difference between eastern Oujiang dialects such as Wencheng and Wenzhou proper is the entering tone, which merged with rising tone after unvoiced consonants, and the retention of /f/ before /o/:
| 八 | 风 | 到 | 晓得 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wenzhou | puu | hoŋ | tə | ɕadei |
| Wencheng | bɔ | foŋ | tɶ | ɕodi |
| bilabial | labio-dental | alveolar | alveolo-palatal | palatal | velar | glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nasal | voiced | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| voiceless | ʔm | ʔn | ʔɲ | ʔŋ | ||||
| plosives | voiced | b | d | ɡ | ||||
| voiceless unaspirated | p | t | k | |||||
| 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 | j | |||||||
| lateral approximants | l | |||||||
Wenzhou has three phonemic tones. While it has eight phonetic tones, most of these are predictable: The yin–yang tone split dating from Middle Chinese still corresponds to the voicing of the initial consonant in Wenzhou, and the ru tones are simply syllables with a final stop.
| Tone number | Tone name | Tone contour |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | yin ping (陰平) | ˦ 4 |
| 2 | yang ping (陽平) | ˧˩ 31 |
| 3 | yin shang (陰上) | ˦˥ 45 |
| 4 | yang shang (陽上) | ˧˦ 34 |
| 5 | yin qu (陰去) | ˦˨ 42 |
| 6 | yang qu (陽去) | ˨ 2 |
| 7 | yin ru (陰入) | ˧˨˧̚ 323 |
| 8 | yang ru (陽入) | ˨˩˨̚ 212 |
Wenzhou dialect has some unique particularities regarding syntax. Like other Chinese dialects, Wenzhou dialect has meanly SOV language structure, but in some situations it's meanly SOV or OSV. SOV is commonly used with verb+suffix, the common suffixes are 过去起落来牢得还. ex. 书给其还 （个）瓶水pai去
There are a lot of sub-branches of Oujiang group of dialects, some are not very intelligible like Wenzhou city dialect with some Wencheng dialect, but there is no trouble understanding neighbouring dialect or very few, I'll take as example 2 dialects spoken in Li'ao village of Ouhai District, Wenzhou, one dialect is spoken in 白门 (where the local people have 姜 as their surname), the other one is 王宅 (where local people have normally 王 or 黄 as their surname), they are nearly 100% except for few vocabulary, as the word RUBBISH is different in these 2 dialects, in one, the 白门 dialect it is ʔlutsuu, in the other is ʔladʒee (from mandarin 垃圾).
EXAMPLES OF OUJIANG DIALECTS
| dialect | 一 | 两 | 三 | 四 | 五 | 六 | 七 | 八 | 九 | 十 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| wenzhou | iaii | liɛ2 | sa1 | sɨ3 | ŋ2 | loɯɯ | ts'aii | puu | tɕaɯ2 | zaii |
| ruian | iaa | la2 | so1 | sɨ3 | ŋ2 | loɯɯ (also liɯɯ in some variants) | ts'aa | puu | tɕaɯ2 | zaa |
"THE FOUR GOSPELS AND ACTS, IN WENCHOW." was published in 1894 under the title of "Chaò-chî Yi-sû Chī-tuh Sang Iah Sing Shī: Sz̀ fuh-iang tà sź-du ae-djüe fa üe-tsiu t'û", with the entire book in Wenzhou dialect.[4]
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