Changsha dialect

Changsha dialect
長沙話
Spoken in	China
Region	Changsha, Hunan province
Native speakers	approx. 6 million
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Xiang New Xiang (Chang-Yi) Changsha dialect
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Linguist List	hsn-cha
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Changsha dialect (simplified Chinese: 长沙话; traditional Chinese: 長沙話; pinyin: Chángshā-huà) is a dialect of Xiang Chinese, which is one of the Sinitic languages. It is spoken predominantly in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. It is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, the official language of China.

Classification

Changsha dialect is what Chinese dialectologists would call a New Xiang language, as opposed to an Old Xiang language. The distinction is mainly based on the presence of the Middle Chinese voiced stops and affricates. The Old Xiang languages, being more conservative, have in general kept them while the New Xiang languages have altogether lost them and changed them to voiceless unaspirated consonants.

Geographic distribution

Changsha dialect is spoken in the city of Changsha and its neighbouring suburbs. However, there are some slight differences between the urban and suburban speech. For instance, the retroflex set is only heard in the suburbs, but not in the city and some words have a different rime in the two varieties.

Dialects

There are no substantial differences between dialects in the neighbourhood of Changsha; however, age dialects do exist. For example, the distinction between alveolar and alveolo-palatal consonants is only made by the elderly while the younger generations do not normally distinguish them. The rimes [-oŋ] and [-ioŋ] have become [-ən] and [-in] in the younger speech. Also, the initial consonant [ɲ] in the elderly's and middled-aged's speech is either dropped altogether or changed to [l].

Phonetics and Phonology

The Changsha dialect, together with other New Xiang languages, has lost the Middle Chinese obstruents, which are changed to voiceless unaspirated consonants in the language. It has also lost all the final stops found in the rù tone in Middle Chinese.

Consonants

Consonants of the Changsha dialect

		bilabial	labio-dental	alveolar	alveolo-palatal	retroflex	velar
nasal		m		n	ɲ		ŋ
plosives	voiceless unaspirated	p		t			k
	voiceless aspirated	pʰ		tʰ			kʰ
fricatives	voiced					ʐ
	voiceless		f	s	ɕ	ʂ	x
affricates	voiceless unaspirated			ts	tɕ	tʂ
	voiceless aspirated			tsʰ	tɕʰ	tʂʰ
lateral approximants				l

Vowels

Tones

Changsha has 5 tones, which are neutralized in syllables ending in a stop.

Tone chart of the Changsha dialect

Tone number	Tone name	Tone contour	Description
1	yin ping (陰平)	˧ (3) or ā	mid
2	yang ping (陽平)	˩˧ (13) or ǎ	rising
3	shang sheng (上聲)	˦˩ (41) or â	falling
4	yin qu (陰去)	˥ (5) or á	high
5	yang qu (陽去)	˨˩ (21) or à	low
6	ru sheng (入聲)	˨˦ʔ (24′) or aʔ	checked

See also

• Xiang Chinese
• List of Chinese dialects

References

• Běijīng dàxué zhōngguóyǔyánwénxuéxì yǔyánxué jiàoyánshì. (1989) Hànyǔ fāngyīn zìhuì. Běijīng: Wénzìgǎigé chūbǎnshè.(北京大學中國語言文學系語言學教研室. 1989. 漢語方音字匯. 北京: 文字改革出版社)
• Norman, Jerry. [1988] (2002). Chinese. Cambridge, England: CUP ISBN 0-521-29653-6
• Wu, Yunji. (2005). A Synchronic and diachronic study of the grammar of the Chinese Xiang dialects. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-018366-8
• Yuán, jiāhuá (1989). Hànyǔ fāngyán gàiyào (An introduction to Chinese regional speech varieties). Beijing, China: Wénzì gǎigé chūbǎnshè. (袁家驊. 1989. 漢語方言概要. 北京:文字改革出版社.)

External links

• Ethnologue report for Xiang
• Cantonese and other dialects (in Chinese)
• Classification of Xiang Dialects from Glossika