Fujian dialect

[BWL]

Most people are aware of the existence of various dialects in China. While Americans know Mandarin and Cantonese, there are in fact many, many more dialects in China that are so different from both Mandarin and Cantonese, the locals in these areas have to actually learn standard Mandarin Chinese like a foreign language. There are even some areas where to this day, Mandarin is not commonly spoken and visitors might be met with amused looks when they try communicating in Mandarin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_varieties_of_Chinese

The article above from Wikipedia, with the accompanying map provides a clear dialect map of modern China. There are 7 major dialect division, with hundreds of local variants. Yes you read correctly, HUNDREDS of local variants.

Today, I'll write a little about my native dialect, which is called Min (闽). The Min dialects are the main dialects spoken in Fujian, Taiwan and eastern Guangdong. There are at least 9 local variations (yes, 9) each with many local subdialects and accents - so a person speaking the same Min dialect variant from two nearby villages might have totally different accents but can still understand each other (more or less). The 9 variants are completely UNINTELLIGIBLE. They're as different as English and Dutch and German. The local village variants are however as different as say, Irish English and Southern Californian, which means they are similar enough to be understandable yet will sound very weird when compared to each other.

My family came from an area called Zhangzhou, 漳州. I speak Southern Min or Minnanhua  閩南語. There are 4 local accents of Minnanhua; , Xiamen 廈門, Quanzhou 泉州, Zhangzhou, 漳州 and Taiwanese. Put one person from each of these 4 regions together in a room and ask them to not talk to each other in Mandarin; they will speak in Minnanhua. Imagine a posh Englishman, an Australian from the outback, a Scotsman from the Highlands and a West Virginian hill-billy trying to communicate with each other. That's how they will sound like to each other!

Now a few interesting facts about (my local variant) of Minnanhua.

Minnanhua and the Wu dialect group (the dialects of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Suzhou) are the only Chinese dialects that have voiced stops - that's the b,d,g and j sounds just like in English, not like in Mandarin. The word for "No" in my dialect is "Bo" pronounced exactly like the French "beau". It is not pronounced as in Mandarin.

There are between 6-8 tones (depending on the local variant) and they have tone sandhi. meaning that the tones change (yes, they CHANGE) when the words occur alone or in a phrase. I will go into this later.

Also, many words have two forms - a literary form (like the onyomi in Japanese, used in phrases, literary words, some formal names, technical words and fixed Classical Chinese expressions) and the colloquial form (like the Japanese kunyomi - used when the characters are spoken in isolation)

Some common words (compare them with Mandarin and Cantonese just to see how different they are). I will not transcribe the tones because Chinese dialects (except Cantonese) are not normally written down so most people have no idea how to transcribe non-Mandarin tones!

Numbers:

1- tsit (colloquial) , it (literary)

2- noh (colloquial), ji (literary)

3- sa

4- si

5- go

6- lak

7- chhit

8- peh

9- kau

10- tsap

An example of sentence structure:

English: He cannot see.

Minnan: i khòaⁿ bē tioh (伊看未著)

Mandarin: tā kàn bù dào (他看不到)

(Yes, even the word for "he" is different!).

The pronouns (I've put the Mandarin forms in brackets so you can make comparisons) are:

I - Goa (Wo)

You - Li (Ni)

He/she/it - I (Ta)

We - Goan or Lan - this is used in an exclusive and inclusive pronominal way (Wo men)

You all - Lin (Ni men)

They - In (Ta men)

Fish - Hi (Yu)

Dog - Kau (Gou)

Chicken - Ke (Ji)

Water - Tsui (Shui)

Sky - Ti (Tian)

Wind - Hong (Fung)

Man - Ta-po (Nanren)

Woman - Tsa-bo (Nuren)

Son - Hau seh (Erzi)

Daughter - Tsa-bo-kia (Nuer)

I love you - Goa ai li (Wo ai ni)

I want to eat rice - Goa beh tsia png (Wo yao chi fan)

Where is my car? - Goa e tsia ti to-lo? (Wo de zhe zai nar?)

Hello - Li ho (Ni hao)

What is your name? -Li kio sa-mih mia? (Ni jiao shenme ming?)

That's all for now. I'll post some more stuff later.

[nonsiccus]

One thing I've always had difficulty explaining are the differences between a dialect and straight-up languages. I can speak some Mandarin and Cantonese, and often times my Caucasian friends will say that I know 3 languages, the third being English. This isn't true, and I explain that Cantonese is simply a dialect while Mandarin is more "true" Chinese.

When pressed, I really don't know what definitively separates a language from a dialect. Have any good analogies that I could use?

[BWL]

One thing I've always had difficulty explaining are the differences between a dialect and straight-up languages. I can speak some Mandarin and Cantonese, and often times my Caucasian friends will say that I know 3 languages, the third being English. This isn't true, and I explain that Cantonese is simply a dialect while Mandarin is more "true" Chinese.

When pressed, I really don't know what definitively separates a language from a dialect. Have any good analogies that I could use?

Actually, there is no universally accepted criterion to distinguish a language from a dialect. Languages are generally known as dialects if :

They have no standard or codified form

They are not written

They lack prestige when compared to the accepted standard language

Now, in this respect, we can classify the various Chinese languages as dialects because they share a common written standard, they are not as prestigious as Mandarin and all Chinese speakers identify culturally and historically as Chinese. Linguistically speaking, however the grammatical and phonological differences between Mandarin and Cantonese are greater than the differences between English and German. While the difference between Beijing Mandarin and Sichuanese Mandarin or that between Hong Kong Cantonese and Toishanese can be said to be dialectal differences; the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese and Fujianese are really great enough for linguists to classify them as different languages. They are regarded as Chinese dialects for cultural reasons rather than linguistic reasons.

[BWL]

To give you an idea what Fujian dialect sounds like. I found this video from Youtube. It's a current affairs program from Zhangzhou 漳州 in Southern Fujian and is entirely in the local Fujianhua dialect. This is the exact same dialect that I speak at home with my family.

I challenge any Mandarin speakers here to decipher what she is saying!