Sichuan Mandarin
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| Sichuan Mandarin | ||
|---|---|---|
| 四川話 | ||
| Pronunciation | ʂːtsʰuən‘huaː | |
| Spoken in | China | |
| Region | Sichuan | |
| Total speakers | ||
| Language family | Sino-Tibetan
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | zh | |
| ISO 639-2 | chi (B) | zho (T) |
| ISO 639-3 | cmn | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Sichuan dialect, otherwise referred to as Sichuanese (formerly written Szechwanese) (simplified Chinese: 四川话; traditional Chinese: 四川話; pinyin: Sìchuānhuà; Wade-Giles: Szŭ4-ch'uan1-hua4, Sichuanese: ʂːtsʰuən‘huaː), is a dialect of Southwestern Chinese, spoken mainly in Sichuan and Chongqing municipality, which was historically part of the province, and other parts of southwestern China:Hubei, Guizhou, Yunnan, Northwest of Hunan and Guangxi provinces.
The dialect is substantially similar to dialects spoken in the neighboring provinces Guizhou and Yunnan. In addition, due to Tibet's proximity to Sichuan, many Tibetans speak Sichuanese, in addition to Tibetan. It is spoken by about 120 million people. If Sichuanese were counted as a separate language, it would be the 10th largest language by number of speakers, just behind Japanese. It is possible, however, to identify significant variations between speakers from different places in the province with various sub-dialects.
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[edit] History
Like many of the southern provinces in China, Sichuan was fully sinicized by the end of the Tang dynasty.[1] Accordingly, one would expect the variety of Chinese in Sichuan to be linguistically closer to other southern varieties of Chinese, such as Cantonese and Min. Sichuan apprears to be an exception however. In the thirteenth century, the population of Sichuan dropped precipitously, suspected to be due in part to a series of plagues and Mongol invasions.[1] The population did not recover until it was replenished by subsequent migrations of Mandarin speakers from the north in following centuries. The newcomers' dialect largely supplanted the earlier varieties of Chinese in Sichuan.[1] Then there was a large-scale immigration campaign, started from 1671 and ended in 1776, during this 105 years, there was a total of 6,230,000 immigrants to Sichuan province. The contemporary Sichuanese was actually formatted during the time of this immigration campaign. Sichuan, and indeed all of southwestern China, has one of the most uniform dialects in all of Inner China, evidence that the variety of Chinese spoken there formed relatively recently.[1]
[edit] Sichuanese and Mandarin
It is not difficult for Mandarin speakers to understand Sichuanese speakers. Also, Sichuanese speakers can also communicate with Chinese people from other provinces of Southwest China, such as Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hunan and Hubei provinces without speaking Mandarin.
The dialect is recognizable because of its different tonal characteristics, nasalization, and clipped vowels. Though the four tone categories are the same as those of standard Mandarin, the third and fourth tones of the Sichuan dialect are almost exactly the reverse of the standard Mandarin tones.[1] Like many other Chinese dialects, the retroflex consonants of standard Mandarin are pronounced as fricatives in Sichuan dialect.
Sichuan dialect has some vernacular spoken words which are not written down in standard Chinese.
One popular, symbolic expression one must know in Sichuanese: 雄起，Xiong2 Qi3 (Sichuanese pronunciation), Xióngqǐ(Mandarin pronunciation) usually used by Sichuanese speakers to cheer people up. In the same situation, Mandarin speakers would usually say 加油（JiāYóu）instead. It should be known that it has a somewhat vulgar etymology.
It is widely remarked in Sichuan and Chongqing that the Chengdu accent is "softer", and the Chongqing one is "harder", even going so far to say that the Chengdu accent suits women while the Chongqing one suits men. Also, it is joked that one would "rather hear a Chengdu girl rail than hear a Chongqing girl speak."
[edit] Prominent speakers
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e Ramsey, S. Robert (1987). The Languages of China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01468-X.
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