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==Relationship with Cantonese==
==Relationship with Cantonese==
Taishanese is a dialect of [[Yue Chinese|Yue]] branch of the Chinese language, which means that some consider it a dialect of Cantonese. However, due to ambiguities in the meaning of "Cantonese" in the English language, as it can refer to both the greater Yue dialect group or its prestige standard, "Taishanese" and "Cantonese" are commonly used in mutually exclusive contexts, i.e. Taishanese is treated separately from "Cantonese". Speakers of Cantonese often feel it difficult to understand Taishanese without adapting.<ref name="Szeto2000">Cantonese speakers have been shown to understand only about 30% of what they hear in Taishanese {{Harv|Szeto|2000}}</ref><ref name="Ma2003">{{Harv|Ma|Cartier|2003}}</ref> The phonology of Taishanese bears a lot of resemblance to Cantonese, since the both of them have common genetic roots. Like other Cantonese dialects, such as the [[Goulou]] dialect, Taishanese pronunciation and vocabulary may sometimes differ greatly from Cantonese. Despite the fact that Taishan stands only {{convert|60|mi}} from the city of Guangzhou, the dialect of Taishan is far removed from the Guangzhou dialect because of the numerous rivers that run between the two.<ref name="Ramsey1987">{{Harv|Ramsey|1987}}</ref> However, because Cantonese is one of the ''[[lingua franca]]s'' of [[Guangdong]], virtually all Taishanese-speakers also understand it. In fact, most [[Siyi]] people in [[Guangdong]] regard their own tongue as merely differently accented Cantonese.{{Citation needed|date=August 2010}}
Taishanese is a dialect of [[Yue Chinese|Yue]] branch of the Chinese language, which means that it can be considered a dialect of [[Cantonese]]. However, due to ambiguities in the meaning of "Cantonese" in the English language, as it can refer to both the greater Yue dialect group or its prestige standard (Standard Cantonese), "Taishanese" and "Cantonese" are commonly used in mutually exclusive contexts, i.e. Taishanese is treated separately from "Cantonese". Speakers of Cantonese often find it difficult to understand Taishanese without adapting.<ref name="Szeto2000">Cantonese speakers have been shown to understand only about 30% of what they hear in Taishanese {{Harv|Szeto|2000}}</ref><ref name="Ma2003">{{Harv|Ma|Cartier|2003}}</ref> The phonology of Taishanese bears a lot of resemblance to Cantonese, since the both of them have common genetic roots. Like other Cantonese dialects, such as the [[Goulou]] dialect, Taishanese pronunciation and vocabulary may sometimes differ greatly from Cantonese. Despite the fact that Taishan stands only {{convert|60|mi}} from the city of Guangzhou, the dialect of Taishan is far removed from the Guangzhou dialect because of the numerous rivers that run between the two.<ref name="Ramsey1987">{{Harv|Ramsey|1987}}</ref> However, because Cantonese is one of the ''[[lingua franca]]s'' of [[Guangdong]], virtually all Taishanese-speakers also understand it. In fact, most [[Siyi]] people in [[Guangdong]] regard their own tongue as merely differently accented Cantonese.{{Citation needed|date=August 2010}}


Cantonese functions as a ''lingua franca'' in Guangdong, and speakers of other Sinitic languages (such as [[Teochew dialect|Chaozhou]], [[Minnan|Min_Nan]], [[Hakka (language)|Hakka]]) living in Guangdong may also speak Cantonese. On the other hand, [[Standard Chinese|Mandarin]] is the standardized language and the only legally-allowed language taught in schools throughout most of the People's Republic of China (except minority areas), residents of Taishan can speak Mandarin as well. Although the Chinese government has been making great effort to popularize Mandarin by administrative means, Taishan residents do not speak Mandarin in their daily life at all. Most people take Mandarin as a foreign language, while the Cantonese remains lingua franca of their native language.
Standard Cantonese functions as a ''lingua franca'' in Guangdong province, and speakers of other Sinitic languages (such as [[Teochew dialect|Chaozhou]], [[Minnan]], [[Hakka (language)|Hakka]]) living in Guangdong may also speak Cantonese. On the other hand, [[Standard Chinese|Mandarin]] is the standardized language and the only legally-allowed language taught in schools throughout most of the People's Republic of China (except minority areas), residents of Taishan city can speak Mandarin as well. Although the Chinese government has been making great effort to popularize Mandarin by administrative means, Taishan residents do not speak Mandarin in their daily life at all. Most people take Mandarin as a foreign language, while the Cantonese remains the lingua franca of their region.


One distinction between Taishanese and Cantonese is the use of the [[voiceless alveolar lateral fricative]] ([[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] ɬ),<ref>{{Harv|Ladefoged|Maddieson|1996}}</ref><ref>{{Harv|Pulleyblank|1984}}</ref> e.g., in the word meaning "three", pronounced ''saam1'' in Cantonese and ''lhaam2'' in Taishanese. Voiceless lateral fricatives can also be found in many other western dialects of Cantonese, such as the Gaoyang and Guinan dialects.
One distinction between Taishanese and Cantonese is the use of the [[voiceless alveolar lateral fricative]] ([[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] ɬ),<ref>{{Harv|Ladefoged|Maddieson|1996}}</ref><ref>{{Harv|Pulleyblank|1984}}</ref> e.g., in the word meaning "three", pronounced ''saam1'' in Cantonese and ''lhaam2'' in Taishanese. Voiceless lateral fricatives can also be found in many other western dialects of Cantonese, such as the Gaoyang and Guinan dialects.

Revision as of 17:31, 6 March 2011

This article is about the dialect. For the people, see Taishanese people.
This article contains Chinese text and IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese and Unicode characters.
Taishanese
Traditional Chinese台山話
Simplified Chinese台山话
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinTáishān huà
Yue: Cantonese
Jyutpingtoi4 saan1 waa2
Taishanese
[台山話] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language tag: zh-yue-Hant (help)
Native toSouthern China, Hong Kong, United States (mostly California and New York City), Canada and Vietnam
Regionwestern and southern Guangdong; the Pearl River Delta; parts of Hainan
Native speakers
~1-2 million[citation needed]
Language codes
ISO 639-1zh
ISO 639-2chi (B)
zho (T)
ISO 639-3–

Taishanese (simplified Chinese: 台山话; traditional Chinese: 台山話; Taishanese: [hɔi˨san˧wa˧˨˥]; Hoisanese, Toisanese) is a dialect of Yue Chinese, and thus a sister dialect of Cantonese. Known as "say yip wah", or "four counties dialect" in Chinese, it is mainly spoken in the 4 counties of Sin Wui（新会） (Putonghua: Xinhui), Hoi San（台山） (Putonghua: Taishan), Hoi Ping（开平） (Putonghua: Kaiping), and Yun Ping（恩平） (Putonghua: Enping) in the southern part of Guangdong Province in China. In the mid to late 19th century, a significant number of Chinese emigrating to North America originated from this area, making Taishanese a dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in North American Chinatowns. It was formerly the lingua franca of the overseas Chinese residing in the United States.[1] It is not currently recognized as having official status in any country.

Names

The earliest linguistic studies refer to the dialect of Llin-nen or Xinning (Chinese: 新寧).[2] Xinning was renamed Taishan in 1914, and linguistic literature has since generally referred to the local dialect as the Taishan dialect, a term based on the Mandarin pronunciation.[3][4][5][6][7][8] Alternative names have also been used. The term Toishan is a convention used by the United States Postal Service,[9] the Defense Language Institute[10] and the United States Census.[11] The terms Toishan, Toisan and Toisaan are all based on Cantonese pronunciation, and are also frequently found in linguistic and non-linguistic literature.[12][13][14][15] Hoisan is a term based on the local pronunciation, although it is generally not used in published literature.[16]

These terms have also been anglicized with the suffix -ese: Taishanese, Toishanese, and Toisanese. Of the previous three terms, Taishanese is most commonly used in academic literature, to about the same extent as the term Taishan dialect.[17][18] The term Hoisanese is rarely used in print literature, although it appears on the internet.[19][20]

Another term used is Siyi (also Seiyap, Szeyap or Szeyup, Chinese: 四邑), which refers to a previous administrative division which comprised the four counties of Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Xinhui. In 1983, a fifth county (Heshan) was added to the Jiangmen prefecture, and so the term Siyi, which literally means "four counties", has become an anachronism.

The term Wuyi (Chinese: 五邑), literally "five counties", refers to the modern administrative region. This term is not used to refer to Taishanese.

History

Taishanese originates from the Taishan region, where it is spoken. Often regarded as a single language, Taishanese can also be seen as a group of very closely related, mutually intelligible subdialects spoken in the various towns and villages in and around Siyi (the four counties of Taishan, Enping, Kaiping, Xinhui).

A vast number of Taishanese immigrants journeyed worldwide through the Taishan diaspora. The Taishan region was a major source of Chinese immigrants in the Americas from the mid-19th and late-20th centuries. Approximately 1.3 million people are estimated to have origins in Taishan.[21] Prior to the signing of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which allowed new waves of Chinese immigrants, Taishanese was the dominant dialect spoken in Chinatowns across North America.[22] It is also spoken in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City Cholon neighborhood.[citation needed]

Taishanese is still spoken in many Chinatowns, including those of Oakland and San Francisco, by older generations of Chinese immigrants and their children, but is today being supplanted by mainstream Cantonese and increasingly by Mandarin in both older and newer Chinese communities alike, across the country.[citation needed]

Relationship with Cantonese

Taishanese is a dialect of Yue branch of the Chinese language, which means that it can be considered a dialect of Cantonese. However, due to ambiguities in the meaning of "Cantonese" in the English language, as it can refer to both the greater Yue dialect group or its prestige standard (Standard Cantonese), "Taishanese" and "Cantonese" are commonly used in mutually exclusive contexts, i.e. Taishanese is treated separately from "Cantonese". Speakers of Cantonese often find it difficult to understand Taishanese without adapting.[5][23] The phonology of Taishanese bears a lot of resemblance to Cantonese, since the both of them have common genetic roots. Like other Cantonese dialects, such as the Goulou dialect, Taishanese pronunciation and vocabulary may sometimes differ greatly from Cantonese. Despite the fact that Taishan stands only 60 miles (97 km) from the city of Guangzhou, the dialect of Taishan is far removed from the Guangzhou dialect because of the numerous rivers that run between the two.[24] However, because Cantonese is one of the lingua francas of Guangdong, virtually all Taishanese-speakers also understand it. In fact, most Siyi people in Guangdong regard their own tongue as merely differently accented Cantonese.[citation needed]

Standard Cantonese functions as a lingua franca in Guangdong province, and speakers of other Sinitic languages (such as Chaozhou, Minnan, Hakka) living in Guangdong may also speak Cantonese. On the other hand, Mandarin is the standardized language and the only legally-allowed language taught in schools throughout most of the People's Republic of China (except minority areas), residents of Taishan city can speak Mandarin as well. Although the Chinese government has been making great effort to popularize Mandarin by administrative means, Taishan residents do not speak Mandarin in their daily life at all. Most people take Mandarin as a foreign language, while the Cantonese remains the lingua franca of their region.

One distinction between Taishanese and Cantonese is the use of the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (IPA ɬ),[25][26] e.g., in the word meaning "three", pronounced saam1 in Cantonese and lhaam2 in Taishanese. Voiceless lateral fricatives can also be found in many other western dialects of Cantonese, such as the Gaoyang and Guinan dialects.

Tones

Taishanese is tonal. There are five contrastive lexical tones inherited from ancient Chinese. The tones are high, mid, low, mid falling, and low falling;[4] in at least one Taishanese dialect, the falling tones have merged into a low falling tone.[27] There is no tone sandhi.[9]

Tone Tone contour[28] Example Changed tone Chao Number Cantonese tone number[citation needed]
high ˥ (55) hau˥ 口 (mouth) (none) - 1
mid ˧ (33) hau˧ 偷 (to steal) mid rising ˧˥ (35) 3
low ˨ or ˩ (22 or 11) hau˨ 頭 (head) low rising ˨˥ (25) 6
mid falling ˧˩ (31) hau˧˩ 皓 (bright) mid dipping ˧˨˥ (325) -
low falling ˨˩ (21) hau˨˩ 厚 (thick) low dipping ˨˩˥ (215) 4

Taishanese has four changed tones: mid rising, low rising, mid dipping and low dipping. These tones are called changed tones because they are the product of morphological processes (e.g. pluralization of pronouns) on four of the lexical tones. These tones have been analyzed as the addition of a high floating tone to the end of the mid, low, mid falling and low falling tones.[7][27][29][30] The high endpoint of the changed tone often reaches an even higher pitch than the level high tone; this fact has led to the proposal of an expanded number of pitch levels for Taishanese tones.[4] The changed tone can change the meaning of a word, and this distinguishes the changed tones from tone sandhi, which does not change a word's meaning.[3] An example of a changed tone contrast is /tʃat˨˩/ (to brush) and /tʃat˨˩˥/ (a brush).

Writing system

No official standardized form of written Taishanese exists.[citation needed] Writing is done using Chinese characters and Mandarin vocabulary and grammar, and many common words used in spoken Taishanese have no corresponding Chinese characters. No standard romanization system for Taishanese exists either; the ones given on this page are ad hoc.

The sound represented by the IPA symbol ‹ɬ› is particularly challenging, as it has no standard romanization.[citation needed] The digraph "lh" used above to represent this sound is used in Totonac, Chickasaw and Choctaw, which are among several written representations in the handful of languages that include the sound. The alternative "hl" is used in Xhosa and Zulu, while "ll" is used in Welsh.

The following chart compares the plural pronouns among Taishanese (which are formed by changing the tone[24]), Cantonese, and Mandarin.

Glossary Taishanese Standard
Cantonese 		Mandarin
transliteration IPA
we/us ngoi [ŋɔɪ] ngo5 dei6 (我哋) wǒmen (我們)
you (plural) niek [nɪɛk] nei5 dei6 (你哋) nǐmen (你們)
they/them kiek [kɪɛk] keoi5 dei6 (佢哋) tāmen (他們)

See also

References

  • Anderson, Stephen R. (1978), "Tone features", in Fromkin, Victoria A. (ed.), Tone: A Linguistic Survey, New York, NY: Academic Press
  • Bauer, Robert S.; Benedict, Paul K. (1997), Modern Cantonese Phonology, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
  • Chao, Yuen-Ren (1951), "Taishan Yuliao", Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Philology (Academia Sinica), 23: 25–76
  • Chen, Matthew Y. (2000), Tone Sandhi: Patterns Across Chinese Dialects, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
  • Cheng, Teresa M. (1973), "The Phonology of Taishan", Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 1 (2): 256–322
  • Chung, L. A. (2007), "Chung: Chinese 'peasant' dialect redeemed", San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, CA
  • Defense Language Institute (1964), Chinese-Cantonese (Toishan) Basic Course, Washington, DC: Defense Language Institute
  • Don, Alexander (1882), "The Lin-nen variation of Chinese", China Review: 236–247
  • Him, Kam Tak (1980), "Semantic-Tonal Processes in Cantonese, Taishanese, Bobai and Siamese", Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 8 (2): 205–240
  • Hom, Marlon Kau (1983), "Some Cantonese Folksongs on the American Experience", Western Folklore, 42 (2), Western Folklore, Vol. 42, No. 2: 126–139, doi:10.2307/1499969
  • Hom, Marlon Kau (1987), Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
  • Hsu, Madeline Y. (2000), Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and China, 1882-1943, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press
  • Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson., Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996), The Sounds of the World's Languages, Blackwell Publishing, p. 203, ISBN 0631198156 {{citation}}: More than one of |surname1= and |author= specified (help)
  • Lee, Gina (1987), "A Study of Toishan F0", Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics, 36: 16–30
  • Light, Timothy (1986), "Toishan Affixal Aspects", in McCoy, John; Light, Timothy (eds.), Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studies, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, pp. 415–425
  • edited by Laurence J.C. Ma and Carolyn Cartier, Laurence; Cartier, Carolyn L. (2003), The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility, and Identity, Rowman & Littlefield, p. 57, ISBN 074251756X {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help); More than one of |surname1= and |author= specified (help)
  • McCoy, John (1966), Szeyap Data for a First Approximation of Proto-Cantonese, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University (Ph.D. Dissertation)
  • Ramsey, S. Robert (1987), The Languages of China, Princeton University Press, pp. 23–104, ISBN 0691066949
  • Pulleyblank, Edwin (1984), Middle Chinese: A Study in Historical Phonology, UBC Press, p. 31, ISBN 0774801921
  • Szeto, Cecilia (2000), "Testing intelligibility among Sinitic dialects" (PDF), Proceedings of ALS2K, the 2000 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, retrieved 2008-09-06
  • Wong, Maurice Kuen-shing (1982), Tone Change in Cantonese, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Yang, Fenggang (1999), Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities, Penn State Press, p. 39
  • Yip, Moira (2002), Tone, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
  • Yiu, T'ung (1946), The T'ai-Shan Dialect, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University (Ph.D. Dissertation)
  • Yu, Alan (2007), "Understanding near mergers: The case of morphological tone in Cantonese", Phonology, 24 (1): 187–214, doi:10.1017/S0952675707001157
Notes
  1. ^ (Yang 1999)
  2. ^ (Don 1882)
  3. ^ a b (Chen 2000)
  4. ^ a b c (Cheng 1973)
  5. ^ a b Cantonese speakers have been shown to understand only about 30% of what they hear in Taishanese (Szeto 2000)
  6. ^ (Yiu 1946)
  7. ^ a b (Yu 2007)
  8. ^ (Anderson 1978)
  9. ^ a b (Lee 1987)
  10. ^ (Defense Language Institute 1964)
  11. ^ "Language code list" (PDF). United States Census, 2000. University of Michigan Library.[dead link]
  12. ^ (Hom 1983)
  13. ^ (Light 1986)
  14. ^ (McCoy 1966)
  15. ^ (Hom 1987)
  16. ^ (Grimes 1996)
  17. ^ (Him 1980)
  18. ^ (Hsu 2000)
  19. ^ Taishan (Hoisanese Sanctuary) from asianworld.pftq.com
  20. ^ (Chung 2007)
  21. ^ Taishan International Web
  22. ^ Although the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed by the signing of the Magnuson Act in 1943, immigration from China was still limited to only 2% of the number of Chinese already living in the United States (Hsu 2000)
  23. ^ (Ma & Cartier 2003)
  24. ^ a b (Ramsey 1987)
  25. ^ (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996)
  26. ^ (Pulleyblank 1984)
  27. ^ a b (Wong 1982)
  28. ^ Chao's tone numbers are generally used in the literature. Each tone has two numbers, the first denotes the pitch level at the beginning of the tone, and the second denotes the pitch level at the end of the tone. Cheng modified the numerical range from 1 (lowest) to 7 (highest): high tone as 66, mid tone as 44, and low tone as 22. In this article Chao's tone letters are used, as they've been adopted by the IPA.
  29. ^ (Bauer & Benedict 1997)
  30. ^ (Yip 2002)
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