Suzhou dialect

Suzhou dialect
Suzhou dialect
Traditional Chinese	蘇州話
Simplified Chinese	苏州话
Hanyu Pinyin
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	Sūzhōuhuà
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanization	Sōujāu wá
Jyutping	sou1 zau1 waa2
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	蘇州閒話
Suzhounese
Transcriptions
Wu
Suzhounese	Sou-tseu ghé-ghô

Suzhounese
Suzhounese
蘇州閒話 / 苏州闲话 ; Sou-tseu ghé-ghô
Pronunciation	[soʊ˥tsøʏ˨˩ɦɛ˩˧ɦʊ˧]
Native to	China
Region	Suzhou and southeast Jiangsu province
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Wu Taihu Suzhou–Shanghai–Jiaxing ; (Su-Hu-Jia) Suzhounese; ; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
ISO 639-6	suji
Linguist List	wuu-suh
Glottolog	suzh1234
Linguasphere	79-AAA-dbb >

Suzhounese (simplified Chinese: 苏州话; traditional Chinese: 蘇州話; pinyin: Sūzhōuhuà; Suzhounese: sou¹ tseu¹ ghe² gho⁶ [səu˥.tsøʏ˥.ɦɛ˨˨˦.ɦo˨˧˩] 蘇州閒話), also known as the Suzhou dialect, is the variety of Chinese traditionally spoken in the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, China. Suzhounese is a variety of Wu Chinese, and was traditionally considered the Wu Chinese prestige dialect. Suzhounese has a large vowel inventory and it is relatively conservative in initials by preserving voiced consonants from Middle Chinese.

Distribution

Suzhou dialect is spoken within the city itself and the surrounding area, including migrants living in nearby Shanghai.

The Suzhou dialect is mutually intelligible with dialects spoken in its satellite cities such as Kunshan, Changshu, and Zhangjiagang, as well as those spoken in its former satellites Wuxi and Shanghai. It is also partially intelligible with dialects spoken in other areas of the Wu cultural sphere such as Hangzhou and Ningbo. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese or Standard Chinese; but, as all public schools and most broadcast communication in Suzhou use Mandarin exclusively, nearly all speakers of the dialect are at least bilingual. Owing to migration within China, many residents of the city cannot speak the local dialect but can usually understand it after a few months or years in the area.

History

Plural pronouns

Second- and third-person pronouns are suffixed with 笃 [toʔ] for the plural. The first-person plural is a separate root, 伲 [ni].[1]

Varieties

Some non-native speakers of Suzhou speak the Suzhou dialect in a "stylized variety" to tell tales.[2]

Phonology

Initials

Initial consonants
		Labial	Dental/Alveolar	Alveolo-palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	tenuis	p	t		k	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ		kʰ
	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Affricate	tenuis		ts	tɕ
	aspirated		tsʰ	tɕʰ
	voiced			dʑ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ɕ		h
Fricative	voiced	v	z			ɦ
Lateral			l

The Suzhou dialect has series of voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops, and voiceless and voiced fricatives. Moreover, palatalized initials also occur.

Finals

Vowel nuclei
	Front		Central	Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Central	Back
Close	/i/	/y/
Near-close	/ɪ/	/ʏ/	/ɵ/	/ʊ/
Mid	/ɛ/		/ə/	/o/
Open	/æ/		/a/	/ɑ/
Diphthong	/øʏ, oʊ/

Finals[3]
Coda		Open			Nasal			Glottal stop
Medial		∅	j	w	∅	j	w	∅	j	w	ɥ
Nucleus	i	i
	y	y
	ɪ	ɪ			ɪɲ
	ʏ	ʏ			ʏɲ
	ɵ	ɵ	jɵ	wɵ
	ʊ	ʊ
	ɛ	ɛ		wɛ
	ə				ən		wən	əʔ	jəʔ	wəʔ	ɥəʔ
	o				oŋ	joŋ		oʔ	joʔ
	øʏ	øʏ
	oʊ	oʊ
	æ	æ	jæ
	a				ã	jã	wã	aʔ	jaʔ	waʔ
	ɑ	ɑ	jɑ	wɑ	ɑ̃	jɑ̃	wɑ̃	ɑʔ	jɑʔ

Syllabic continuants: [z̩] [z̩ʷ] [β̩~v̩] [m̩] [ŋ̩] [l̩]

Notes:

The Suzhou dialect has a rare contrast between "fricative vowels" [i, y] and ordinary vowels [ɪ, ʏ].
/j/ is pronounced [ɥ] before rounded vowels.

The Middle Chinese [-ŋ] rimes are retained, while [-n] and [-m] are either retained or have disappeared in the Suzhou dialect. Middle Chinese [-p -t -k] rimes have become glottal stops, [-ʔ].

In the Suzhou dialect, [gə] is a very special demonstrative that is used alongside a separate set of proximal and distal demonstratives. [gə] can indicate referents appearing in a speech situation, which may be close to or far away from the deictic center, and under these conditions, [gə] is always used in combination with gestures. Hence [gə] can serve both proximal and distal functions.[4]

Tones

Suzhou is considered to have seven tones. However, since the tone split dating from Middle Chinese still depends on the voicing of the initial consonant, these constitute just three phonemic tones: ping, shang, and qu. (Ru syllables are phonemically toneless.)

Tone chart
Tone number	Tone name	Tone letters	Description
1	yin ping (陰平)	˦ (44)	high
2	yang ping (陽平)	˨˨˦ (224)	level-rising
3	shang (上)	˥˨ (52)	high falling
4	yin qu (陰去)	˦˩˨ (412)	dipping
5	yang qu (陽去)	˨˧˩ (231)	rising-falling
6	yin ru (陰入)	˦ʔ (4)	high checked
7	yang ru (陽入)	˨˧ʔ (23)	rising checked

In Suzhou, the Middle Chinese Shang tone has partially merged with the modern yin qu tone.

Suzhou dialect in literature

Ballad-narratives

A "ballad–narrative" (說唱詞話) known as "The story of Xue Rengui crossing the sea and Pacifying Liao" (薛仁貴跨海征遼故事), which is about the Tang dynasty hero Xue Rengui[5] is believed to have been written in the Suzhou dialect.[6]

Novels

Han Bangqing wrote Lives of Shanghai Flowers, one of the earliest novels in Wu dialect, in Suzhou dialect. Suzhou serves as an important drive for Han to write the novel. Suzhou dialect is used in innovative methods to demonstrate urban space and time, as well as the interrupted narrative aesthetics, making it an integral part of an effort, which is presented as a fundamental and self-conscious new thing. [7] Han's novel also inspired other authors to write in Wu dialect.

References

Yue, Anne O. (2003). "Chinese Dialects: Grammar". In Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.). The Sino-Tibetan Languages (illustrated ed.). London: Routledge. p. 86. ISBN 0-7007-1129-5.
Clements, Clancy (2000). "Review of Creole and Dialect Continua". Language. 76 (1): 160. doi:10.1353/lan.2000.0054. JSTOR 417399. S2CID 141755433. She also examines a stylized variety of Suzhou Wu as used to tell stories by native speakers of another dialect.
Ling, Feng (2009). A Phonetic Study of the Vowel System in Suzhou Chinese (PhD thesis). City University of Hong Kong.
Chen, Yujie (2015), Chappell, Hilary M (ed.), "The semantic differentiation of demonstratives in Sinitic languages", Diversity in Sinitic Languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723790.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-872379-0, retrieved 2021-12-06
Idema, Wilt L. (2007). "Fighting in Korea: Two Early Narratives of the Story of Xue Rengui". In Breuker, Remco E. (ed.). Korea in the Middle: Korean Studies and Area Studies: Essays in Honour of Boudewijn Walraven (illustrated ed.). Leiden: CNWS Publications. p. 341. ISBN 978-90-5789-153-3. A prosimetrical rendition, entitled Xue Rengui kuahai zheng Liao gushi 薛仁貴跨海征遼故事 (The story of Xue Rengui crossing the sea and Pacifying Liao), which shares its opening prose paragraph with the Xue Rengui zheng Liao shilüe, is preserved in a printing of 1471; it is one of the shuochang cihua 說唱詞話 (ballad-narratives
Idema, Wilt L. (2007). "Fighting in Korea: Two Early Narratives of the Story of Xue Rengui". In Breuker, Remco E. (ed.). Korea in the Middle: Korean Studies and Area Studies: Essays in Honour of Boudewijn Walraven (illustrated ed.). Leiden: CNWS Publications. p. 342. ISBN 978-90-5789-153-3. for telling and singing) which were discovered in the suburbs of Shanghai in 1967. While these shuochang cihua had been printed in modern-day Beijing, their language suggests that they had been composed in the Wu Chinese area of Suzhou and surroundings,
Des Forges, Alexander (2007). Mediasphere Shanghai: The Aesthetics of Cultural Production. University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3081-6. JSTOR j.ctt13x1jm2.

External links

Wu Association

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[1] Yue, Anne O. (2003). "Chinese Dialects: Grammar". In Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.). The Sino-Tibetan Languages (illustrated ed.). London: Routledge. p. 86. ISBN 0-7007-1129-5.

[2] Clements, Clancy (2000). "Review of Creole and Dialect Continua". Language. 76 (1): 160. doi:10.1353/lan.2000.0054. JSTOR 417399. S2CID 141755433. She also examines a stylized variety of Suzhou Wu as used to tell stories by native speakers of another dialect.

[3] Ling, Feng (2009). A Phonetic Study of the Vowel System in Suzhou Chinese (PhD thesis). City University of Hong Kong.

[4] Chen, Yujie (2015), Chappell, Hilary M (ed.), "The semantic differentiation of demonstratives in Sinitic languages", Diversity in Sinitic Languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723790.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-872379-0, retrieved 2021-12-06

[5] Idema, Wilt L. (2007). "Fighting in Korea: Two Early Narratives of the Story of Xue Rengui". In Breuker, Remco E. (ed.). Korea in the Middle: Korean Studies and Area Studies: Essays in Honour of Boudewijn Walraven (illustrated ed.). Leiden: CNWS Publications. p. 341. ISBN 978-90-5789-153-3. A prosimetrical rendition, entitled Xue Rengui kuahai zheng Liao gushi 薛仁貴跨海征遼故事 (The story of Xue Rengui crossing the sea and Pacifying Liao), which shares its opening prose paragraph with the Xue Rengui zheng Liao shilüe, is preserved in a printing of 1471; it is one of the shuochang cihua 說唱詞話 (ballad-narratives

[6] Idema, Wilt L. (2007). "Fighting in Korea: Two Early Narratives of the Story of Xue Rengui". In Breuker, Remco E. (ed.). Korea in the Middle: Korean Studies and Area Studies: Essays in Honour of Boudewijn Walraven (illustrated ed.). Leiden: CNWS Publications. p. 342. ISBN 978-90-5789-153-3. for telling and singing) which were discovered in the suburbs of Shanghai in 1967. While these shuochang cihua had been printed in modern-day Beijing, their language suggests that they had been composed in the Wu Chinese area of Suzhou and surroundings,

[7] Des Forges, Alexander (2007). Mediasphere Shanghai: The Aesthetics of Cultural Production. University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3081-6. JSTOR j.ctt13x1jm2.