Amoy dialect

language
name=Amoy
nativename= _zh. 廈門話 / _zh. 厦门话 "Ē-mnUnicode|̂g-ōe"
familycolor=Sino-Tibetan
states=People's Republic of China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese), Japan (due to large Taiwanese community in Tokyo-Yokohama Metropolitan Area), and other areas of Min Nan and Hoklo settlement
region=Southern Fujian province
speakers= over 10 million ("no recent data")
rank=
fam2=Chinese
fam3=Min
fam4=Min Nan
fam5=Hokkien
nation=None
agency=None
iso1=zh|iso2b=chi|iso2t=zho|iso3=nan


color box|#112b00 Amoy

Amoy (Xiamen) is a Southern Min dialect which originally comes from Southern Fujian province (in Southeast China), in the area centered around the city of Xiamen. It is highly similar to Taiwanese, and is widely known as Hokkien dialects in Southeast Asia. Amoy is widely considered to be the prestige dialect within Hokkien and Min Nan in general. For this reason, Amoy is often simply called Hokkien or Min Nan.

Spoken Amoy and Taiwanese are both mixtures of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou speech. As such, they are very closely aligned phonologically. However, there are some subtle differences between the two, as a result of physical separation and other historical factors. The lexical differences between the two are slightly more pronounced. Generally speaking the Hokkien dialects of Amoy, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia are mutually intelligible.

History

In 1842, as a result of the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, Xiamen (Amoy) was designated as a trading port. Xiamen and Gulangyu islands rapidly developed, which resulted in a large influx of people from neighboring areas such as Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. The mixture of these various accents have formed the basis for Amoy. Over the last several centuries, there have been a large number of descendents from these areas who have migrated to Taiwan. Eventually, Amoy became popularly known as Taiwanese among the locals living there. Just like British and American English, there are subtle lexical and phonologic differences between Taiwanese and Amoy, however these differences do not generally pose any barriers to communication. Amoy speakers also spread to Southeast Asia, where it became widely known as Hokkien.

Special characteristics

Spoken Amoy preserves many of the sounds and words from Middle Chinese. However, the vocabulary of Amoy was also influenced in its early stages by the languages of the Minyue peoples. [cite web
url = http://www.jinjiang.gov.cn/lhzzfw/wyzc/mjgs/20060420801280.shtml
title = The Ancient Minyue People and the Origins of the Min Nan Language
work = Jinjiang Government website
language = Mandarin
accessdate = 2008-04-12] Spoken Amoy is known for its use of nasalization. Unlike English or Mandarin, Amoy also distinguishes between unaspirated voiceless and unaspirated voiced initial consonants. In less technical terms, native Amoy speakers have little difficulty in hearing the difference between the following syllables:

Tone sandhi

Amoy has extremely extensive tone sandhi (tone-changing) rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced is not affected by the rules. What an 'utterance' is, in the context of this language, is an ongoing topic for linguistic research. For the purpose of this article, an utterance may be considered a word, a phrase, or a short sentence. The diagram illustrates the rules that govern the pronunciation of a tone on each of the syllables affected (that is, all but the last in an utterance):

Literary versus vernacular readings

Like other varieties of Min Nan, Amoy has complex rules for literary and vernacular readings of Chinese characters. For example, the character for "big" has a vernacular reading of tōa (IPA2|tua˧˧), but a literary reading of tāi (IPA2|tai˧˧). Because of the loose nature of the rules governing when to use a given pronunciation, a student of the language must often simply memorize the appropriate reading for a word on a case by case basis. For single syllable words, it is more common to use the vernacular pronunciation. This situation is comparable to the on and kun readings of Japanese.

The vernacular readings are generally thought to predate the literary readings; the literary readings appear to have evolved from middle Chinese. The following chart illustrates some of the more commonly seen sound shifts:

*view chart in simplified Chinese script
*view chart in traditional Chinese script

Romanization

*A number of Romanization schemes have been devised for Amoy. PeUnicode|̍h-ōe-jī is one of the oldest and best established. However, the Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet has become the Romanization of choice for many of the recent textbooks and dictionaries from Taiwan.

See also

*Languages of China
*Min Nan
*Quanzhou
*Zhangzhou
*Taiwanese
*Penang Hokkien
*Lan-nang
*Languages of Taiwan
*Chinese in Singapore
*
*

References

Sources

* cite book
last =
first =
authorlink =
coauthors =
year =
title = To understand the beauty of Taiwanese ( _zh. 愛說台語五千年 -- 台語聲韻之美)
language = Mandarin/Taiwanese
publisher =
location =
id = ISBN 9789867101471
* cite book
last =
first =
authorlink =
coauthors =
year =
title = A vocabulary and sentence structure comparison between Mandarin, Taiwanese and English ( _zh. 華台英詞彙句式對照集)
language = Mandarin/Taiwanese/English
publisher =
location =
id = ISBN 9571138223
* cite book
last =
first =
authorlink =
coauthors =
year =
title = Papers on Southern Min Syntax (Lang|zh-tw|閩南語語法研究試論)
language = Mandarin/Min Nan/English
publisher =
location =
id = ISBN 9571509485

External links

* [http://203.64.42.21/iug/ungian/SoannTeng/chil/taihoa.asp _zh. 台語-華語線頂辭典] , Amoy-Mandarin on-line dictionary
* [http://nlg.csie.ntu.edu.tw/systems/TWLLMT/index.html _zh. 臺灣本土語言互譯及語音合成系統] , Amoy-Hakka-Mandarin on-line conversion
* [http://gb.cri.cn/chinese_radio/minnan.htm listen to the news in Amoy Min Nan] (site is in Chinese script)
* [http://homepage2.nifty.com/Gat_Tin/fangyin.htm Database of Pronunciations of Chinese Dialects] (in English, Chinese and Japanese)
* [http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/index.php Glossika - Chinese Languages and Dialects]
* [http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/languages/amoy.html Voyager - Spacecraft - Golden Record - Greetings From Earth - Amoy] , includes translation and sound clip
*: (The voyager clip says: Thài-khong pêng-iú, lín-hó. Lín chiaUnicode|̍h-pá--bē? Ū-êng, toUnicode|̍h lâi gún chia chē--ô·! _zh. 太空朋友，恁好。恁食飽未？有閒著來阮遮坐哦!)