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| Classification | |
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Main article: List of Chinese dialects
Chinese consists of several dialect continuums. Differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, with few radical breaks. However, the degree of change in intelligibility varies immensely depending on region. For example, the varieties of Mandarin spoken in all three northeastern Chinese provinces are mutually intelligible, but in the small province of Zhejiang a person from one valley may be completely unable to comprehend the language from the next, though both are considered dialects of Wu Chinese.
In the book, "The Middle kingdom: a survey of the ... Chinese empire and its inhabitants ...", published in 1848, the different varieties of Chinese were described as "dialects", the book acknowledged that they were mutually unintelligible and the term "dialect" was used in a different sense than the western term, in which a dialect was merely indicative of a small difference in pronunciation, while in China, the entire grammar and idiom were different, the written language was what united the different Chinese dialects.[1]
Mandarin (Standard Chinese) is the dominant variety, much more widely studied than the rest. Outside of China, the only two varieties commonly presented in formal courses are Mandarin and Cantonese. Inside China, second-language acquisition is generally achieved through immersion in the local language.
The scientific classification of Chinese into different regional dialects is very recent. The first such efforts were made by Fang-kuei Li in 1937, which, with only minor modifications, form the basis for the current, conventionally accepted set of seven dialect groups:[2]
Phylogenetic classification
Chinese
Guan
Jin
Mandarin
Standard Chinese
Northeastern Mandarin
Southwestern Mandarin
Jiaoliao Mandarin
Zhongyuan Mandarin
Jilu Mandarin
Jianghuai Mandarin
Lanyin Mandarin
Dungan
?
Huizhou
Wu
Oujiang
Taihu
Taizhou
Wuzhou
Chuqu
Xuanzhou
Xiang
New Xiang
Old Xiang
Gan
Hakka
Min
Min Bei
Min Bei
Shaojiang
Min Dong
Min Zhong
Puxian
Min Nan
Hokkien
Teochew
Qiongwen
Leizhou
Hainanese
Pinghua
Yue
Yuehai
Cantonese
Tanka
Sanyi
Zhongshan
Taishanese
Luoguang
Guinan
Gaoyang
? Tuhua
Ba-Shu †
Mandarin 官话/官話 (also Northern 北方話/北方话): (c. 836 million speakers) This is the group of dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China, and makes up the largest spoken language in China. Standard Chinese, called Putonghua or Guoyu in Chinese, which is often also translated as "Mandarin" or simply "Chinese", belongs to this group. It is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China, and Singapore. Mandarin Chinese is also the official language of the Republic of China governing Taiwan, although there are minor differences in this standard from the form standardized in the PRC.[3]
Wu 吴语/吳語: (c. 77 million) spoken in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the municipality of Shanghai. Wu includes Shanghai dialect, sometimes taken as the representative of all Wu dialects. Wu's subgroups are extremely diverse, especially in the mountainous regions of Zhejiang and eastern Anhui. The group possibly comprises hundreds of distinct spoken forms which are not mutually intelligible. Wu is notable among Chinese dialects in having kept "voiced" (actually slack voiced) initials, such as /b̥/, /d̥/, /ɡ̊/, /z̥/, /v̥/, /d̥ʑ̊/, /ʑ̊/ etc.
Yue (Cantonese) 粤语/粵語: (c. 71 million) spoken in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macau, parts of Southeast Asia and by Overseas Chinese with an ancestry tracing back to the Guangdong region. The term "Cantonese" may cover all the Yue dialects, including Taishanese, or specifically the Canton dialect of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. Not all varieties of Yue are mutually intelligible. Yue retains the full complement of Middle Chinese word-final consonants (p, t, k, m, n, ng), and has a well-developed inventory of tones.
The Min languages 闽语/閩語: (c. 60 million) spoken in Fujian, Taiwan, parts of Southeast Asia particularly Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore, and among Overseas Chinese who trace their roots to Fujian and Taiwan, particularly prevalently in New York City in the United States. The largest Min language is Hokkien, which is spoken in Southern Fujian, Taiwan, and by many Chinese in Southeast Asia and includes the Taiwanese, and Amoy dialects amongst others. Min is the only branch of Chinese that cannot be directly derived from Middle Chinese. It is also the most diverse, divided into seven subgroups defined on the basis of relative mutual intelligibility: Min Nan (which includes Hokkien and Teochew), Min Dong (which includes the Fuzhou dialect), Min Bei, Min Zhong, Pu Xian, Qiong Wen, and Shao Jiang.
Xiang (Hunanese) 湘语/湘語:(c. 36 million) spoken in Hunan. Xiang is usually divided into the "old" and "new" dialects, with the new dialects being significantly influenced by Mandarin.[citation needed]
Hakka 客家话/客家話: (c. 34 million) spoken by the Hakka people, a cultural group of the Han Chinese, in several provinces across southern China, in Taiwan, and in parts of Southeast Asia such as Malaysia and Singapore. The term "Hakka" itself translates as "guest families", and many Hakka people consider themselves to be descended from Song-era and later refugees from North China, although their genetic origin is still disputed. Hakka has kept many features of northern Middle Chinese that have been lost in the North. It also has a full complement of nasal endings, -m -n -ŋ and occlusive endings -p -t -k, maintaining the four categories of tonal types, with splitting in the ping and ru tones, giving six tones. Some dialects of Hakka have seven tones, due to splitting in the qu tone. One of the distinguishing features of Hakka phonology is that Middle Chinese voiced initials are transformed into Hakka voiceless aspirated initials.
Gan 赣语/贛語: (c. 31 million) spoken in Jiangxi. In the past, it was viewed as closely related to Hakka dialects, because of the way Middle Chinese voiced initials have become voiceless aspirated initials, as in Hakka, and were hence called by the umbrella term "Hakka-Gan dialects".
Ba-Shu, of Sichuan, was one of the most divergent varieties of Chinese. However, it was supplanted by Southwestern Mandarin during the Ming dynasty.
There is some dispute as to whether the following varieties should be classified separately:
Huizhou 徽语/徽語: (c. 3.2 million) spoken in the southern parts of Anhui—formerly, and sometimes still, classified as a dialect of Wu, now classified as an independent dialect.
Jin 晋语/晉語: spoken in Shanxi, as well as parts of Shaanxi, Hebei, Henan, and Inner Mongolia. Often classed as dialect of Mandarin.
Pinghua 平话/平話: (c. 2 million) spoken in parts of the Guangxi. Sometimes classed as dialect of Cantonese.
Some varieties remain unclassified. These include:
Danzhou dialect 儋州话/儋州話: spoken in Danzhou, Hainan.
Xianghua 乡话/鄉話: spoken in a small strip of land in western Hunan, this group of dialects has not been conclusively classified.
Shaozhou Tuhua 韶州土话/韶州土話: spoken at the border regions of Guangdong, Hunan, and Guangxi. This is an area of great linguistic diversity, and has not yet been conclusively described or classified.
In addition, the Dungan language (东干语/東干語) is a dialect of Mandarin spoken in Kyrgyzstan. However, it is written in the Cyrillic script as a result of Soviet rule.
[edit] Tags:Hong Kong,Macau,Taiwan,Singapore,Ba-shu,Mandarin,Jin,Wu,Hui,Xiang,Gan,Hakka,Yue,Ping,语,語,话,話,Varieties,Chinese Dialects,Cantonese,Min,Mutually Intelligible,Dialects,方,Variety,Written,Edit,List Of Chinese Dialects,Dialect Continuums,Zhejiang,Wu Chinese,Fang-kuei Li,Standard Chinese,Northeastern Mandarin,Southwestern Mandarin,Jiaoliao Mandarin,Zhongyuan Mandarin,Jilu Mandarin,Jianghuai Mandarin,Lanyin Mandarin,Oujiang,Taihu,Taizhou,Wuzhou,Chuqu,New Xiang,Old Xiang,Min Bei,Shaojiang,Min Dong,Min Zhong,Hokkien,Leizhou,Hainanese,Tanka,Sanyi,Zhongshan,Taishanese,Luoguang,Guinan,Gaoyang,Tuhua,People's Republic Of China,Republic Of China,Jiangsu,Shanghai,Shanghai Dialect,Anhui,Slack Voiced,Yue (cantonese),Guangdong,Guangxi, | |
| Quantitative similarity | |
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A 2007 study compared 15 major urban dialects on two objective and two subjective criteria:[4]
Lexical similarity
Phonological regularity (regularity of sound correspondences, not direct phonological similarity)
Subjective intelligibility
Subjective similarity
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| Major north+central vs. south split | |
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Generally the top-level split put Northern, New Xiang, and Gan in one group and Min (samples at Fuzhou, Xiamen, Chaozhou), Hakka, and Yue in the other group, except for phonological regularity, where the one Gan dialect (Nanchang) was in the Southern group and very close to Hakka, and the deepest phonological difference was between Wenzhounese (the southernmost Wu dialect) and all other dialects.
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| Lack of clear splits within the north+central area | |
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Changsha (New Xiang) was always within the Mandarin group. No Old Xiang dialect was in the sample.
Taiyuan (Jin or Shanxi) and Hankou (Wuhan, Hubei) were subjectively perceived as relatively different from other Northern dialects, but were very close in subjective intelligibility. Objectively, Taiyuan had substantial phonological divergence but little lexical divergence.
Chengdu (Sichuan) was somewhat divergent lexically, but very little on the other measures.
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| Intermediate position of Wu, and unintelligibility of Wenzhounese | |
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The two Wu dialects were closer to the Northern/New Xiang/Gan group in lexical similarity and strongly closer in subjective intelligibility, but closer to Min/Hakka/Yue in phonological regularity and subjective similarity, except that Wenzhou was farthest from all other dialects in phonological regularity. The two Wu dialects were close to each other in lexical similarity and subjective similarity, but not in subjective intelligibility, where Suzhou was actually closer to Northern/Xiang/Gan than to Wenzhou.
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| High divergence within Min | |
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Fuzhou (Eastern Min) grouped only weakly with the Southern Min dialects Xiamen and Chaozhou on the two objective criteria, and was actually slightly closer to Hakka and Yue on the subjective criteria.
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| Closeness of the southernmost dialect areas | |
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Hakka and Yue grouped closely together on the three lexical and subjective measures, but not in phonological regularity.
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| Local classifications | |
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Generally, when referring to a local dialect in everyday speech, the speaker will refer to the dominant city in the region as a marker of the dialect as a whole. For example, a Wu speaker would not ask a fellow Wu speaker if they speak "Wu", but would rather ask whether or not they speak the dialect from Suzhou or Hangzhou, known as Suzhouhua and Hangzhouhua, respectively, in Chinese. Generally dialects are branded according to cities, geographical regions, or provinces. This method of informal classification is commonly used in spoken language. Provinces whose dialects are more homogeneous within its boundaries, such as Shaanxi, Shanxi, Shandong, Hebei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, etc. tend to refer to their own dialects by the name of the province (although sub-dialects exist and can be referred to locally by the name of a city). In more diverse provinces such as Fujian, dialects are informally classified by mutual intelligibility into Min Nan (闽南话), Min Dong (闽东话), and Min Bei (闽北话); in Zhejiang, where there is vast variance in spoken language, dialects are generally classified by cities or counties – as such, no singular "Zhejiang dialect" exists. An area with widespread homogeneity in spoken language is the three provinces of Northeastern China, whose spoken language is collectively known as Northeastern Mandarin, or Dongbei Hua (东北话) in Chinese.
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| Sociolinguistics | |
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This section called "Sociolinguistics" needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2008)
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| Bilingualism with the standard language | |
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In southern China (not including Hong Kong and Macau), where the difference between Standard Chinese and local dialects are particularly pronounced, well-educated Chinese are generally fluent in Standard Chinese[citation needed], and most people have at least a good passive knowledge of it[citation needed], in addition to being native speakers of the local dialect. The choice of dialect varies based on the social situation. Standard Chinese is usually considered more formal and is required when speaking to a person who does not understand the local dialect. The local dialect (be it non-Standard Chinese or non-Mandarin altogether) is generally considered more intimate and is used among close family members and friends and in everyday conversation within the local area. Chinese speakers will frequently code switch between Standard Chinese and the local dialect. Parents will generally speak to their children in dialect, and the relationship between dialect and Mandarin appears to be mostly stable. Local languages give a sense of identity to local cultures.
Knowing the local dialect is of considerable social benefit and most Chinese who permanently move to a new area will attempt to pick up the local dialect. Learning a new dialect is usually done informally through a process of immersion and recognizing sound shifts. Generally the differences are more pronounced lexically than grammatically. Typically, a speaker of one dialect of Chinese will need about a year of immersion to understand the local dialect[citation needed] and about three to five years to become fluent in speaking it[citation needed]. Because of the variety of dialects spoken, there are usually few formal methods for learning a local dialect.
Due to the variety in Chinese speech, Mandarin speakers from each area of China are very often prone to fuse or "translate" words from their local tongue into their Mandarin conversations. In addition, each area of China has its recognizable accents while speaking Mandarin. Generally, the nationalized standard form of Mandarin pronunciation is only heard on news and radio broadcasts. Even in the streets of Beijing, the flavour of Mandarin varies in pronunciation from the Mandarin heard on the media.
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| Political issues | |
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A school in Guangdong with writing "Please Speak Mandarin. Please Write Standard Vocabulary" on the wall
During the Qing dynasty, knowledge of Mandarin (kwan hwa) was required by anyone who pursued an education in China, and was the official language. The Mandarin of the capital was considered standard, and variants of it existed in Henan, Shandong, and Anhui.[5]
Within mainland China, there has been a persistent drive towards promoting the standard language （大力推广普通话 dàlì tuīguǎng Pǔtōnghuà）; for instance, the education system is entirely Mandarin-medium from the second year onwards. However, usage of local dialect is tolerated, and in many informal situations socially preferred. In Hong Kong, colloquial Cantonese characters are never used in formal documents, other than quoting witnesses' spoken statements during legal trials, and within the PRC a character set closer to Mandarin tends to be used. At the national level, differences in dialect generally do not correspond to political divisions or categories, and this has for the most part prevented dialect from becoming the basis of identity politics. Historically, many of the people who promoted Chinese nationalism were from southern China and did not natively speak the national standard language, and even leaders from northern China rarely spoke with the standard accent. For example, Mao Zedong often emphasized his Hunan origins in speaking, rendering much of what he said incomprehensible to many Chinese. One consequence of this is that China does not have a well-developed tradition of spoken political rhetoric, and most Chinese political works are intended primarily as written works rather than spoken works.
Another factor that limits the political implications of dialect is that it is very common within an extended family for different people to know and use different dialects. In addition, while speaking similar dialect provides very strong group identity at the level of a city or county, the high degree of linguistic diversity limits the amount of group solidarity at larger levels. Finally, the linguistic diversity of southern China makes it likely that in any large group of Chinese, Mandarin will be the only form of speech that everyone understands.
On the other hand in Taiwan, the government had a policy of promoting Mandarin over the local languages, such as Taiwanese and Hakka. This policy was implemented rigidly when Mandarin was the only language of instruction in schools, while English was offered as the compulsory second language. Since late 1990s, other languages have also been offered as a second language.
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| Examples of variations | |
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The Min languages are often regarded as furthest removed linguistically from Standard Chinese, in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary. Historically, the Min languages were the first to diverge from the rest of the Chinese languages; see the discussion of historical Chinese phonology for more details. (The Min languages are also the group with the greatest amount of internal diversity, and are often regarded as consisting of at least five separate languages, e.g. Northern Min, Southern Min, Central Min, Eastern Min and Puxian Min.)
To illustrate: In Taiwanese, a variety of Hokkien, a Min language, to express the idea that one is feeling a little ill ("I am not feeling well."), one might say (in Pe̍h-oē-jī):
Goá kā-kī lâng ū tām-po̍h-á bô sóng-khoài.
我家己人有淡薄無爽快。（我家己人有淡薄无爽快）
which, when translated cognate-by-cognate into Mandarin would be spoken as an awkward or semantically unrecognizable sentence:
Wǒ jiājǐ rén yǒu dànbó wú shuǎngkuài.
Could roughly be interpreted as:
My family's own person is weakly not feeling refreshed.
Whereas when spoken colloquially in Mandarin, one would either say:
Wǒ zìjǐ yǒu yīdiǎn bù shūfu.
我自己有一點不舒服。（我自己有一点不舒服）
I myself feel a bit uncomfortable.
or:
Wǒ yǒu yīdiǎn bù shūfu.
我有一點不舒服。（我有一点不舒服）
I feel a bit uncomfortable.
the latter omitting the reflexive pronoun (zìjǐ), not usually needed in Mandarin.
Some people, particularly in northern China, would say:
Wǒ yǒu diǎnr bù shūfu.
我有點兒不舒服。（我有点儿不舒服）
Literally: I am [a] bit[DIM.] uncomfortable.
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| Comparison of vocabulary | |
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[Wu, Xiang, Gan, Min Nan missing tone] Differences in the socio-political context of Chinese and European languages gave rise to the difference in terms of linguistic perception between the two cultures. In Western Europe, Latin remained the written standard for centuries after the spoken language diverged and began shifting into distinct Romance languages, and similarly Classical Chinese remained the written standard while dialects of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese diverged. Latin, however, was eventually revived as a spoken language as well (Medieval Latin), and political fragmentation gave rise to independent states roughly the size of Chinese provinces, which eventually generated a political desire to create separate cultural and literary standards to differentiate nation-states and standardize the language within a nation-state. But in China, the cultural standard of Classical Chinese (and later, Vernacular Chinese) remained a purely literary language, while the spoken language continued to diverge between different cities and counties, much as European languages diverged, due to the scale of the country, and the obstruction of communication by geography.
The diverse Chinese spoken forms and common written form comprise a very different linguistic situation from that in Europe. In Europe, linguistic differences sharpened as the language of each nation-state was standardized. The use of local speech became stigmatized. In China, standardization of spoken languages was weaker, but they continued to be spoken, with written Classical Chinese read with local pronunciation. Although, as with Europe, dialects of regional political or cultural capitals were still prestigious and widely used as the region's lingua franca, their linguistic influence depended more on the capital's status and wealth than entirely on the political boundaries of the region.
The following table was transliterated using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The forms account for lexical (writing) differences in addition to phonological (sound) differences. For example, the Mandarin word for the pronoun "s/he" is 他 /tʰa˥/; but in Cantonese (Yue) a different word, 佢 is used.
English
Mandarin
Wu
Xiang
Gan
Hakka
Yue
Minnan
French
Italian
Catalan
Spanish
Portuguese
Romanian
I
uɔ˨˩˦
ŋu
ŋo
ŋo
ŋai˩
ŋɔː˩˧
ɡua
je
io
jo
yo
eu
eu
you
ni˨˩˦
noŋ
n̩
n̩
n˩, nʲi˩
nei˩˧
li
tu
tu
tu
tú
tu
tu
(s)he
tʰa˥
ɦi
tʰa
tɕiɛ
kʰi˩, ki˩
kʰɵy˩˧
i
il/elle
egli/lui
ell
él/ella
ele/ela
el
this
tʂɤ˥˩
ɡəʔ
ko
ko
e˧˩, nʲia˧˩
niː˥
tɕɪt
ceci
questo
aquest
este
este
acesta
that
na˥˩
ɛ
la
hɛ
ke˥˧
kɔː˧˥
he
cela
quello
aqueix
aquel
aquele
acela
human
ʐən˧˥
ɳin
zən
ɳin
nʲin˩
jɐn˨˩
laŋ
homme
uomo
home
hombre
homem
om
man
nan˧˥
nø
lan
lan
nam˩
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