Hangzhou dialect

The Hangzhou dialect is spoken in the city of Hangzhou and its immediate suburbs, but excluding areas further away from Hangzhou such as Xiāoshān (蕭山) and Yúháng (余杭) (both originally county-level cities and now the districts within Hangzhou City). The number of speakers of the Hangzhou dialect has been estimated to be about 1.2 to 1.5 million. It belongs to the Wu language family, which in turn constitutes one of the Sinitic language families. The Hangzhou dialect is of immense interest to Chinese historical phonologists and dialectologists because phonologically, it exhibits extensive similarities with the other Wu languages; however, grammatically and lexically, it shows many Mandarin tendencies. (Simmons 1995)

Classification

Geographic distribution

Dialects

Phonetics and phonology

Consonants

Consonants of Hangzhou dialect

		bilabial	labio-dental	alveolar	alveolo-palatal	velar	glottal
nasal
plosives	voiced
	voiceless unaspirated
	voiceless aspirated
fricatives	voiced
	voiceless
affricates	voiced
	voiceless unaspirated
	voiceless aspirated
approximants
lateral approximants

Vowels

Monophthongs

Diphthongs

Triphthongs

Syllable structure

Onsets

Rimes

Tones

Citation tones

The Hangzhou tonal system is similar to that of the Suzhou dialect, in that some words with shàng tone in Middle Chinese have merged with the yīn qù tone.

Tone chart of Hangzhou dialect

Tone number	Tone name	Tone letters	Description
1	yin ping (陰平)	˧˨˧ (323)	mid dipping
2	yang ping (陽平)	˨˩˨ (212)	low dipping
3	shang (上)	˥˩ (51)	falling
4	yin qu (陰去)	˧˦ (334)	mid rising
5	yang qu (陽去)	˩˧ (113)	low rising
6	yin ru (陰入)	˥ʔ (55)	high checked
7	yang ru (陽入)	˩˨ʔ (12)	low checked

Tone sandhi

Grammar

Morphology

Syntax

Vocabulary

History

The most important event to impact on Hangzhou's dialect was its establishment as Ling'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. When the Northern Song Dynasty was conquered by the Jin Dynasty in 1127, large numbers of northern refugees fled to what is now Hangzhou, speaking predominently Mandarin of the Henan variety. Within 30 years, contemporary accounts record that immigrants outnumbered natives in Hangzhou. This resulted in Mandarin influences in the pronunciation, lexicon and grammar of the Hangzhou dialect.

Further influence by Mandarin occurred after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1912. The local Manchu garrisons were dissolved, adding significant numbers of Beijing dialect Mandarin speakers to the population.

Because of the frequent commerce and intercourse between Hangzhou and Shaoxing, the Hangzhou dialect is also influenced by the Shaoxing dialect.

Examples

See also

• List of Chinese dialects
• Suzhou dialect
• Shanghainese
• Wu dialects

References

• Qián,nǎiróng (1992). Dāngdài Wúyǔ yánjiū. (Contemporary Wu linguistics studies). Shànghǎi: shànghǎi jiāoyù chūbǎnshè. (錢乃榮. 1992. 當代吳語研究. 上海敎育出版社) ISBN 7-5320-2355-9
• Simmons, Richard VanNess (1995). "Distinguishing characteristics of the Hangzhou dialect". New Asia Academic Bulletin 11 383–398.

External links

• Wu Association