Mandarin is a group of Sinitic (Chinese) languages natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect,the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin dialects are found in the north,the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese. Many varieties of Mandarin,such as those of the Southwest and the Lower Yangtze,are not mutually intelligible or are only partially intelligible with the standard language. Nevertheless,Mandarin is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers.
Chinese,also known as Sinitic,is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties,many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups:Mandarin,Wu,Min,Xiang,Gan,Hakka and Yue,though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility,but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese.
Yuen Ren Chao,also known as Zhao Yuanren,was a Chinese-American linguist,educator,scholar,poet,and composer,who contributed to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar. Chao was born and raised in China,then attended university in the United States,where he earned degrees from Cornell University and Harvard University. A naturally-gifted polyglot and linguist,his Mandarin Primer was one of the most widely used Mandarin Chinese textbooks in the 20th century. He invented the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization scheme,which,unlike pinyin and other romanization systems,transcribes Mandarin Chinese pronunciation without diacritics to indicate tones.
Taishanese,or in the Cantonese romanization Toisanese,is a language of Yue Chinese. The language is related to and is often referred to as Cantonese but has little mutual intelligibility with the latter. Taishanese is spoken in the southern part of Guangdong Province in China,particularly around the city-level county of Taishan located on the western fringe of the Pearl River Delta. In the late 19th century and early 20th century,a significant amount of Chinese emigration to North America originated from Siyi (Seiyap),the area where this variety is natively spoken;making Taishanese a dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in Chinatowns in Canada and the United States. It was formerly the lingua franca of the overseas Chinese residing in the United States.
Zhenjiang,alternately romanized as Chinkiang,is a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu Province,China. It lies on the southern bank of the Yangtze River near its intersection with the Grand Canal. It is opposite Yangzhou and between Nanjing and Changzhou. Zhenjiang was formerly the provincial capital of Jiangsu and remains as an important transportation hub. As of the 2010 census,its total population was 3,114,105 inhabitants whom 1,200,760 lived in the built-up area made of the 3 urban districts. The town is best known both in China and abroad for its fragrant black vinegar,a staple of Chinese cooking.
The Wu languages is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai,Zhejiang Province and the part of Jiangsu Province south of the Yangtze River,which makes up the cultural region of Wu. The Suzhou dialect was the prestige dialect of Wu as of the 19th century and it formed the basis of Wu's koinédialect,Shanghainese,at the turn of the 20th century. Speakers of various Wu languages sometimes inaccurately labelled their mother tongue as "Shanghainese" when introduced to foreigners. The languages of Northern Wu are mutually intelligible with each other,while those of Southern Wu are not.
Shanghainese,also known as the Shanghai language,Shanghai dialect,or Hu language,is a Wu Chinese language spoken in the central districts of the City of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Shanghainese,like the rest of the Wu language group,is mutually unintelligible with other varieties of Chinese,such as Mandarin.
Liyang is a county-level city under the administration of Changzhou in the Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. In 2011,it had a population of about 781,500. It borders the prefecture-level divisions of Wuxi to the east,Xuancheng (Anhui) to the south,and Nanjing to the west.
Tianjin dialect is a Mandarin dialect spoken in the city of Tianjin,China. It is comprehensible to speakers of other Mandarin dialects,though its greatest deviation from the others lies in its individual tones,and the lack of retroflex consonants. The regional characteristics make the dialect an important part of the Tianjin city identity,and sharply contrasts with the dialect of nearby Beijing,despite relatively similar phonology.
Jiangnan or Jiang Nan is a geographic area in China referring to lands immediately to the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River,including the southern part of its delta. The region encompasses the city of Shanghai,the southern part of Jiangsu Province,the southeastern part of Anhui Province,the northern part of Jiangxi Province and the northern part of Zhejiang Province. The most important cities in the area include Anqing,Changzhou,Hangzhou,Nanjing,Ningbo,Shaoxing,Suzhou,Wuxi,Wenzhou,and Zhenjiang.
The Sinitic languages,often synonymous with "Chinese languages",constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split between the Sinitic languages and the rest of the family,but this view is rejected by an increasing number of researchers. The Bai languages,whose classification is difficult,may be an offshoot of Old Chinese and thus Sinitic;otherwise Sinitic is defined only by the many varieties of Chinese,and usage of the term "Sinitic" may reflect the linguistic view that Chinese constitutes a family of distinct languages,rather than variants of a single language.
A checked tone,commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone,is one of the four syllable types in the phonology in Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone",a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a syllable that ends in a stop consonant or a glottal stop. Separating the checked tone allows -p,-t,and -k to be treated as allophones of -m,-n,and -ng,respectively,since they are in complementary distribution. Stops appear only in the checked tone,and nasals appear only in the other tones. Because of the origin of tone in Chinese,the number of tones found in such syllables is smaller than the number of tones in other syllables. In Chinese phonetics,they have traditionally been counted separately.
Sichuanese or Szechwanese (simplified Chinese:四川话;traditional Chinese:四川話;Sichuanese Pinyin:Si4cuan1hua4;pinyin:Sìchuānhuà;Wade–Giles:Szŭ4-ch'uan1-hua4),also called Sichuanese/Szechwanese Mandarin (simplified Chinese:四川官话;traditional Chinese:四川官話;pinyin:Sìchuān Guānhuà) is a branch of Southwestern Mandarin spoken mainly in Sichuan and Chongqing,which was part of Sichuan Province until 1997,and the adjacent regions of their neighboring provinces,such as Hubei,Guizhou,Yunnan,Hunan and Shaanxi. Although "Sichuanese" is often synonymous with the Chengdu-Chongqing dialect,there is still a great amount of diversity among the Sichuanese dialects,some of which are mutually unintelligible with each other. In addition,because Sichuanese is the lingua franca in Sichuan,Chongqing and part of Tibet,it is also used by many Tibetan,Yi,Qiang and other ethnic minority groups as a second language.
Wenzhounese,also known as Oujiang,Tong Au or Auish,is the language spoken in Wenzhou,the southern prefecture of Zhejiang,China. Nicknamed the "Devil's Language" for its complexity and difficulty,it is the most divergent division of Wu Chinese,with little to no mutual intelligibility with other Wu dialects or any other variety of Chinese. It features noticeable elements in common with Min Chinese,which is spoken to the south in Fujian. Oujiang is sometimes used as the broader term,and Wenzhou for Wenzhounese proper in a narrow sense.
Changzhou dialect,sometimes called Changzhounese,is a dialect of Wu,a Sino-Tibetan language family,and belongs to the Taihu dialect group. It is spoken in the city of Changzhou and surrounding areas in Jiangsu province of China. It has many similarities with the Shanghainese and Suzhou dialect. It is not at all mutually intelligible with Mandarin,China's official language. It is much more closely related to the neighboring Wuxi dialect with which it is mostly mutually intelligible.
Xuzhou dialect is a Mandarin dialect spoken in the city of Xuzhou in Jiangsu province of China.
The Jiangyin dialect is a Northern Wu Chinese dialect spoken in the city of Jiangyin in Jiangsu province. The Jiangyin dialect is a member of the Wu Chinese Taihu Wu family of dialects,which means the inhabitants speak a dialect similar to that of nearby Wuxi,Changzhou,Suzhou,and Shanghai. The Jiangyin dialect itself is of the Piling variety,related to the Changzhou dialect. The Jiangyin dialect has the highest degree of mutual intelligibility with the dialects of the closest neighboring cities of Changzhou and Wuxi but also has a fairly large degree of mutual intelligibility with the dialects of nearby Suzhou and Shanghai. As one travels south towards Wuxi away from the urban center of Jiangyin,the Jiangyin dialect increasingly sounds closer to the Wuxi dialect.
Taihu Wu (吳語太湖片) or Northern Wu (北部吳語) is a Wu Chinese language spoken over much of southern part of Jiangsu province,including Suzhou,Wuxi,Changzhou,the southern part of Nantong,Jingjiang and Danyang;the municipality of Shanghai;and the northern part of Zhejiang province,including Hangzhou,Shaoxing,Ningbo,Huzhou,and Jiaxing. A notable exception is the dialect of the town of Jinxiang,which is a linguistic exclave of Taihu Wu in Zhenan Min-speaking Cangnan county of Wenzhou prefecture in Zhejiang province. Used in regions around Taihu Lake and Hangzhou Bay,this group makes up the largest population among all Wu speakers. Taihu Wu dialects such as Shanghainese,Shaoxing and Ningbo are mutually intelligible even for L2 Taihu speakers.
Tong–Tai,also known as Tai–Ru is a group of Lower Yangtze Mandarin dialects spoken in the east-central part of Jiangsu province in the prefecture-level cities of Nantong and Taizhou. The alternative name refers to the county-level city of Rugao within Nantong. This region includes the areas which are to the north of Yangtze River and to the east of Grand Canal. There are about 11.37 million speakers there and this region occupies about 15,000 square kilometers.
Lower Yangtze Mandarin is one of the most divergent and least mutually-intelligible of the Mandarin languages,as it neighbours the Wu,Hui,and Gan groups of Sinitic languages. It is also known as Jiang–Huai Mandarin,named after the Yangtze (Jiang) and Huai Rivers. Lower Yangtze is distinguished from most other Mandarin varieties by the retention of a final glottal stop in words that ended in a stop consonant in Middle Chinese.
