Meixian dialect

Meixian dialect (Chinese: 梅縣話; mɔi jan fa; Moiyen), also known as Meizhou (梅州話), Moiyen, and Yue-Tai, is the prestige dialect of Hakka Chinese and the basis for the Hakka dialects in Taiwan. It is named after Mei County, Guangdong.

Phonology

Initials

There are two series of stops and affricates in Hakka, both voiceless: tenuis /p t ts k/ and aspirated /pʰ tʰ tsʰ kʰ/.

* When the initials /ts/ ⟨z⟩, /tsʰ/ ⟨c⟩, /s/ ⟨s⟩, and /ŋ/ ⟨ng⟩ are followed by a palatal medial /j/ ⟨i⟩, they become [tɕ] ⟨j⟩, [tɕʰ] ⟨q⟩, [ɕ] ⟨x⟩, and [ɲ] ⟨ng⟩, respectively.

Finals

Moiyen Hakka has six vowels, [i ɛ a ə ɔ u], that are romanised as i, ê, a, e, o and u, respectively.

Moreover, Hakka finals exhibit the final consonants found in Middle Chinese, namely [m, n, ŋ, p, t, k] which are romanised as m, n, ng, b, d, and g respectively in the official Moiyen romanisation.

* When [iɛn iɛt] are preceded by a velar or glottal, they become [ian iat] respectively.

[iɛ ia iɔ iu ua uɛ uɔ] are analysed as medial+nucleus combinations, [ɛu ui ɔi au ai] are analysed as nucleus+coda combinations and [iai iui iau uai] are analysed as medial+nucleus+coda combinations.^[2]

Tone

Moiyen has four tones, which are reduced to two in a checked syllable. The Middle Chinese fully voiced initial syllables became aspirated voiceless initial syllable in Hakka. Before that happened, the four Middle Chinese 'tones', ping, shang, qu, ru, underwent a voicing split in the case of ping and ru, giving the dialect six tones in traditional accounts.

These so-called yin-yang tonal splittings developed mainly as a consequence of the type of initial a Chinese syllable had during the Middle Chinese stage in the development of Chinese, with voiceless initial syllables [p- t- k-] tending to become of the yin type, and the voiced initial syllables [b- d- ɡ-] developing into the yang type. In modern Moiyen Hakka however, part of the Yin Ping tone characters have sonorant initials [m n ŋ l] originally from the Middle Chinese Shang tone syllables and fully voiced Middle Chinese Qu tone characters, so the voiced/voiceless distinction should be taken only as a rule of thumb.

Hakka tone contours differs more as one moves away from Moiyen. For example, the Yin Ping contour is ˧ (33) in Changting (長汀) and ˨˦ (24) in Sixian (四縣), Taiwan.

Entering tone

Hakka preserves all of the entering tones of Middle Chinese and it is split into two registers. Meixian has the following:

• 陰入 [ ˩ ] a low pitched checked tone
• 陽入 [ ˥ ] a high pitched checked tone

Middle Chinese entering tone syllables ending in [k] whose vowel clusters have become front high vowels like [i] and [ɛ] shifts to syllables with [t] finals in modern Hakka^[3] as seen in the following table.

Tone sandhi

For Moiyen Hakka, the yin ping and qu tone characters exhibit sandhi when the following character has a lower pitch. The pitch of the yin ping tone changes from ˦ (44) to ˧˥ (35) when sandhi occurs. Similarly, the qu tone changes from ˥˧ (53) to ˦ (55) under sandhi. These are shown in red in the following table.

The neutral tone occurs in some postfixes. It has a mid pitch.

References