Wenzhounese (p= Wēnzhōuhuà, Wenzhounese: ), also known as Oujiang (labels=no), Tong Au (labels=no) or Au Nyü (labels=no), is the language spoken in Wenzhou, the southern prefecture of Zhejiang, China. 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.
Given its long history and the isolation of the region in which it is spoken, Wenzhounese is so unusual in its phonology that it has the reputation of being the least comprehensible dialect for an average Mandarin speaker.
Wenzhounese is one of five varieties of Chinese other than Standard Mandarin used for broadcasting by China Radio International, alongside Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew dialect, and Hakka Chinese.
Classification
Wenzhounese is part of the
Wu Chinese group of Chinese dialects, sharing many linguistic features with them.
These are spoken over the Zhejiang and south
Jiangsu provinces.
Wenzhounese is seen as a typical representative of southern Wu.
Geographic distribution
Wenzhounese is spoken primarily in Wenzhou and the surrounding southern portion of
Zhejiang, China. To a lesser extent, it is also spoken in scattered pockets of
Fujian in southeastern China. Overseas, it is spoken in increasingly larger communities in the United States in Flushing Chinatown in the Queens borough of New York City, and the Chinatowns in Brooklyn in New York City.
Wenzhounese is also spoken by some
Overseas Chinese communities in Europe, in particular Italy, France, and Spain.
It is used more widely among the Chinese people in Italy than Mandarin.
Over 80% of the Chinese diaspora that are resident in the city of
Prato, Tuscany, were born in Zhejiang Province.
Dialects
Wenzhounese can be generally divided into the following three dialects:
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Northern Dialect, including dialects spoken in Wenzhou, Ouhai, Yongqiong, Yongjia.
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Southern Dialect, including Rui'an dialect, Wencheng dialect, Longgang dialect, Pingyang dialect, etc.
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Northeastern Dialect, which is spoken in the city of Yueqing.
The most important difference between eastern Wenzhounese dialects such as Wencheng and Wenzhou proper are tonal differences (Wencheng has no falling tones) and the retention of before :
The tones of all other Oujiang dialects are similar to Wenzhounese. (Wenzhounese puu transcribes the lengthened entering tone.)
Phonology
Consonants
is lateral, and is palatal.
Vowels
The only
Syllable coda is the velar nasal, in and syllabic .
Tone
Citation tones
Wenzhou has three
. While it has eight phonetic tones, most of these are predictable: The
yīn–yáng tone split dating from Middle Chinese still corresponds to the voicing of the initial consonant in Wenzhou, and the
shǎng tones are abrupt and end in
glottal stop (this has been used as evidence for a similar situation independently posited for
Old Chinese).
The
rù tones, however, are unusual in being distinct despite having lost their final stops; in addition, the vowel has lengthened, and the tone has become more complex than the other tones (though some speakers may simplify them to low falling or rising tones).
+Tone chart of Wenzhou dialect |
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The shǎng and rù tones are barely distinguishable apart from the voicing of the initial consonant, and so are phonetically closer to two tones than four. Chen (2000) summarizes the tones as M & ML ( ping), MH ( shǎng), HM & L ( qu), and dipping (MLM, rù); not only are the píng and qù pairs obviously distinct phonetically, but they behave as four different tones in the ways they undergo tone sandhi.
As in Shanghainese, in Wenzhounese only some of the syllables of a phonological word carry tone. In Wenzhounese there may be three such syllables, with the tone of any subsequent (post-tonic) syllables determined by the last of these. In addition, there may be pre-tonic syllables (), which take a low tone. However, in Wenzhounese only one tonic word may exist in a prosodic unit; all other words are reduced to low tone.
Tone sandhi
Up to three tonic syllables may occur together, but the number of resulting tones is reduced by
tone sandhi. Of the six phonetic tones, there are only fourteen lexical patterns created by two tonic syllables. With one exception, the
shǎng and
qù tones reduce to HM (
yīn qù) before any other tone, and again with one exception, the
rù tone does not interact with a following tone. The
shǎng and
rù tones change a preceding non-
rù tone to HM, and are themselves never affected.
(Sandhi that are exceptions to the generalizations above are in bold.)
With a compound word of three syllables, the patterns above apply to the last two. The antepenultimate tonic syllable takes only two possible tones, by dissimilation: low if the following syllable (in sandhi form) starts high (HM), high otherwise. So, for example, the unusually long compound noun "daily necessities" (lit., 'firewood-rice-oil-salt-sauce-vinegar-tea') has the underlying tones
- |ML.MH.ML.ML.HM.HM.ML|
Per sandhi, the last two syllables become L.L. The antepenult then dissimilates to H, and all pre-tonic syllables become L, for:
- /L.L.L.L.H.L.L/
At a phrasal level, these tones may separate, with a HM tone, for example, shifting to the beginning of a phrase. In the lexicalized phrase "radio receiver" ('wireless telephone tube'), the underlying tones are
- |ML.HM.L.L.ML|
Per sandhi, the last two become HM.ML. There is no dissimilation, explained by this being grammatically a lexicalized phrase rather than a compound. The HM shifts forward, with intermediate syllables becoming M (the tone the HM leaves off at):
- /HM.M.M.M.ML/
Although checked (MLM) syllables rarely change in compound words, they can change in phrases: "tall steel case" is underlyingly M.MLM.HM. The middle syllable shifts to HM, and sandhi operates on this *HM.HM sequence to produce HM.ML. The HM then shifts back, yielding /HM.M.ML/.
Such behaviour has been used to support arguments that contour tones in languages like Chinese are single units and they are independent of vowels or other segments.
Grammar
Morphology
Wenzhou has a tonal
deixis morpheme. To convey the sense of "this", the classifier changes its tone to
rù (dipping), and a voiced initial consonant is devoiced. For example, from 'group' there is 'this group', and from 'some (people)' there is 'these (people)'.
Romanization
Reputation for eccentricity
Wenzhounese is reputed to have been used during the Second Sino-Japanese War during wartime communication via
and in the Sino-Vietnamese War for programming military
code.
[关于越南战争期间中方使用的密码语言，有一说认为并不是温州话，而是来自温州苍南县（当时仍属平阳县）钱库一带的蛮话，参见 访今寻古之三：扑朔迷离说蛮话，苍南广电网 ] There is a common rhymed saying in China that reflects this comprehension difficulty: "Fear not the Heavens, fear not the Earth, but fear the Wenzhou man speaking Wenzhounese" (labels=no).
Examples
There are several sub-branches of Oujiang dialects, and some are not mutually intelligible with the Wenzhou city dialect and the Wencheng dialect, but neighboring dialects are often mutually intelligible. For example, there are 2 dialects spoken in Li'ao Village in the
Ouhai District of Wenzhou: one spoken in Baimen (白門), where the local people have 姜 as their surname, and one spoken in Wangzhai (王宅), where local people have normally 王 or 黄 as their surname. Their dialects are almost fully mutually intelligible, except for a few vocabulary items. An example would be the word for "garbage" (垃圾), which is in the Baimen dialect and in the Wangzhai dialect.
Numbers in Oujiang Dialects
(The long vowels transcribe the lengthened ru tone.)
Literature in Wenzhounese
A translation of part of the
New Testament, specifically the
Gospel and the book of Acts, was published in 1894 under the title "
Chaò-Chḯ Yi-sû Chī-tuh Sang Iah Sing Shī: Sz̀ fuh-iang tà sź-du 'ae-djüe fa üe-tsiu t'û¹-'ò", with the entire book in Romanized Wenzhou dialect.
[ (in Wenzhounese).]
See also
Citations
General sources
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Qian Nairong (1992). Dāngdài Wúyǔ yánjiū. (Contemporary Wu linguistics studies). Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. (錢乃榮. 1992. 當代吳語研究. 上海敎育出版社)
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Shen, Kecheng (2009). Wēnzhōuhuà cíyǔ kǎoshì. Ningbo: Ningbo chubanshe. (宁波 : 宁波出版社, 2009.)
