So after our discussion of
the very ancient origins of Chinese, let’s come back to modern
times and talk about varieties of Chinese spoken now. In modern
parlance, we usually refer to “dialects” of the “Chinese
language”, but today we won’t beThis is because Chinese is so
diverse internally that, at least to me as a language learner, it
doesn’t seem like one language at all, but rather a subfamily of
related languages.
Of course this is all quite
subjective, as there is really no strict rule for separating
“languages” from “dialects”. Ultimately I think it’s a
question of politics. Since China places a strong emphasis on
national unity, they’re very eager to think of even highly
divergent varieties as “dialects”. Imagine if the Roman Empire
had never fallen, and persisted into the 20th century—and
to this day half of Europe is governed by its successor state. We
would still have languages like Spanish and French, but they might
still be considered regional Latin “dialects”, given the history
of political unity. Just as a Spaniard and Frenchman may recognize
the similarities between their languages, but still find
communication difficult, so would the situation be between a
Sichuanese and a Hong Konger. So, instead of using the words
“language” and “dialect”, let’s just say “variety”
instead.
So let’s take a look!
There are about ten main varieties of Chinese, give or take. I have
exposure to only three of these, and even then I can’t claim to be
an expert. But I do think it’s interesting, and would love to
spread the word about this cool topic.
Firstly I’d like to talk
about what is called in English “Mandarin”. Mandarin is by far
the most widely spoken Chinese variety. In common parlance the term
“Mandarin” is frequently used as a name for Standard Chinese,
which really is only one of many Mandarin sub-varieties. For
instance, here in Guiyang locals speak what’s called a Southwest
Mandarin variety—but that doesn’t mean it’s the same as
Standard Chinese, as any Guiyanger will tell you. Although closer to
Standard Chinese than what you’d hear in Hong Kong, Guiyanghua has
a southern Chinsese habit of merging its /l/ and /n/ sounds.
Northern Mandarin varieties don’t have this habit—instead, they
tend to add an /r/ sound after vowels, leading to a popular joke
among laowai that Beijing people all talk like pirates.
So let’s compare a simple
sentence in Standard Chinese, Guiyanghua, and a northern Mandarin
variety:
Standard
Chinese:
Zai4 na4
li3
|
Northern
Mandarin:
Zai4 nar4
|
Guiyang
Mandarin
[tsai n̪a
n̪i]
|
English
It’s over
there.
|
Another cool thing about
Guiyanghua does that Standard Chinese doesn’t is merge
post-alveolar “hushers” with alveolar “hissers”, such that
si4 “four” and shi2 “ten” blend together, at least to my
uninitiated ear. This results in endless confusion for poor laowai
like me who just want to get their shopping done. In fact this
really cool feature is shared with other varieties across southern
China.
One of these varieties is Wu,
spoken around the mouth of the Yangtze in places like Shanghai and
Hangzhou, where I used to live. It shares the hisser-husher merger
that we see in Guiyanghua, with another really cool feature: Wu has
voiced initials.
Let’s
quickly go over what I mean when I say that. When we take apart a
Chinese syllable—say 同
tong2
“together” we can break the syllable down into three parts:
initial /t/, vowel /o/, and coda /ŋ/
(that is, “ng”). In
most modern Chinese varieties there are two main rules concerning the
consonants:
1.
Don’t
talk about Fight Club
The only consonants allowed in the coda are /n/ and /ŋ/.
2.
Non-nasal initial consonants are voiceless.
Voiceless
means that you’re not making a humming noise in your throat when
you make the sounds. You can test whether a sound is voiced or
voiceless by putting a finger on your throat and checking for a
vibration. Using this method, for example, we can deduce that /b/ is
voiced, while /p/ is voiceless. The Mandarin phonemic inventory
contains the latter, but not the former.
But
wait a minute, isn’t there a B in Beijing?
Although
the modern Hanyu Pinyin romanization system uses the letter B, the
initial consonant in Beijing is actually an unaspirated /p/, which
means that it’s a P sound, but unaccompanied by a puff of air.
It’s hard for English speakers to do at the beginning of a word, so
it’s romanized to B. This
confusion of unaspirated vs. voiced is one of Pinyin’s great
shortcomings, which is why I myself greatly prefer the older
Wade-Giles romanization system. With this system we have Beijing
romanized as “Pei-ch’ing”, which really is much more accurate to
the Chinese pronunciation.
In
Wu, on the other hand, /b/ actually exists as a distinct sound, along
with other voiced consonants that existed in ancient Chinese, but
have dropped out of most modern varieties.
Back
when I lived in Wuxi and Hangzhou, two Wu-speaking cities, I remember
how every day I would get to listen to people using these beautiful,
millennia-old voiced initials. I used to close my eyes and imagine
that I had traveled back in time to the Tang or Song dynasty—which
we do, in a way, when we hear these voiced consonants handed down
from long ago. I only know a few words in Wu, but I do remember how
to say “Thank you”: [d͡ʒʲa
d͡ʒʲa].
Compare with Mandarin xiexie
and
Old Chinese [*lja:gs]
(1).
In the Wu version we have not only a voiced initial, but the vowel
itself has even retained its ancient pronunciation.
Speaking
of retaining ancient pronunciations, let’s take a look at
Cantonese. Cantonese is very special because it preserves an
important feature that has been lost in most other modern varieties:
along with varieties like Hakka and Min-Nan, Cantonese retains the
word-final consonants that existed in the Chinese of a thousand years
ago.
Take,
for instance, the word 越yue4,
which historically referred to various kingdoms and tribes in
southern China. We can reconstruct it to have been pronounced
[*ɦuat̚]
in Middle Chinese (my main man Pulleybank) and [*ɢʷa:d]
in Old Chinese (Zhengzhang) (2). Amazingly, Cantonese retains this
ancient ending in its pronunciation of the word, that is, jyut6.
Can
you think of where else we might see this ancient word-final /t/? As
I say, the word yue4
refers generally to the ancient peoples and cultures of southern
China. It originally referred to peoples living in the area of what
is now Shanghai. As Chinese civilization spread southward, the
concept of yue4—or
as they would’ve said, Gwa:d—gradually
came to refer to peoples living farther and farther south, until
finally it gave the name to China’s southern neighbor: Vietnam,
from Middle Chinese 越南
/*
ɦuat̚
nəm/
(Pulleybank) (3).
So
that’s it for our discussion of Chinese language varieties. As
always, feel free to leave a comment, always great to hear from you
guys. Once again, I’m the Brofessor—see you next time.
Sources:
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