Everything about Taishan Dialect totally explained
|familycolor=Sino-Tibetan
|states=Southern
China,
Hong Kong,
United States (mostly
California and
New York City),
Canada and
Vietnam
|region=western and southern
Guangdong; the
Pearl River Delta; parts of
Hainan
|speakers=Over 5 million
|rank=
|fam2=
Chinese
|fam3=
Yue (Cantonese)
|fam4=
Siyi
|iso1=zh|iso2b=chi|iso2t=zho|iso3=yue-toi}}
Taishanese,
Toishanese or
Hoisanese (台山話), or
Siyi (四邑; after the
area of the same name), is a
Chinese dialect (or group of very similar
dialects) spoken in and around
Taishan, a coastal county of the
Guangdong province, located southwest of
Guangzhou. Taishanese is grouped within
Cantonese (Yue), one of the major branches of
spoken Chinese.
Taishanese is an anglicization of the language's name in
Mandarin, whereas
Hoisanese is derived from the name of the language in the language itself. Taishanese is also called
Toishanese in English, from the anglicized name of the language in
Cantonese. In linguistics literature written in English, the language is usually referred to as Taishanese, the name used here.
History
Taishanese originates from the Taishan region, where it's 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). It is said one can tell the speaker's village or town from his or her accent and vocabulary.
Taishanese is one of the major languages of the Chinese diaspora. The Taishan region was a major source of Chinese immigrants in the Americas in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Approximately 1.3 million people are estimated to have origins in Taishan. 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. It is also spoken in
Vietnam's
Ho Chi Minh City Cholon neighborhood.
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 Cantonese and increasingly by Mandarin in newer Chinese communities across the county.
Relationship between Cantonese and Taishanese
Taishanese is often regarded as similar to
mainstream Cantonese (Guangzhou dialect), although Cantonese speakers are generally unable to understand Taishanese. The phonology of Taishanese bears some resemblance to mainstream Cantonese, but pronunciation and vocabulary differ, sometimes greatly. Because Cantonese is one of the
lingua francas of
Guangdong, virtually all Taishanese-speakers also understand Cantonese, to the extent that some even regard their own tongue as merely differently accented mainstream Cantonese.
In Guangdong, Cantonese functions as a
lingua franca, and speakers of other languages/dialects (such as
Chaozhou Minnan,
Hakka, Taishanese) more often than not also speak Cantonese. Today, since Mandarin Putonghua is the standardized language taught in schools throughout the People's Republic of China, residents of Taishan speak
Mandarin as well. As a result, in this region, Taishanese-speakers often freely
code-switch in conversation, among Taishanese, Cantonese, and
Mandarin.
One distinction between Taishanese and Cantonese is the use of the
voiceless lateral fricative (
IPA ɬ), for example, in the word meaning "three", pronounced
saam1 in Cantonese and
lhaam2 in Toisanese.
Tones
Taishanese is a
tone language. There are five contrastive lexical
tones inherited from earlier stages of Chinese (high, mid, low, mid falling, and low falling; in at least one Taishanese dialect, the falling tones have merged into a low falling tone).
| Tone |
Tone contour |
Example |
Changed tone |
Chao Number |
Example |
| high |
˥ (55) |
hau˥ 口 (mouth) |
(none) |
- |
- |
| mid |
˧ (33) |
hau˧ 偷 (to steal) |
mid rising |
˧˥ (35) |
|
| low |
˨ or ˩ (22 or 11) |
hau˨ 頭 (head) |
low rising |
˨˥ (25) |
|
| mid falling |
˧˩ (31) |
hau˧˩ 皓 (bright) |
mid dipping |
˧˨˥ (325) |
|
| low falling |
˨˩ (21) |
hau˨˩ 厚 (thick) |
low dipping |
˨˩˥ (215) |
|
Taishanese has four
changed tones: mid rising, low rising, mid dipping and low dipping. These tones are called changed tones because they're based 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. 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. The changed tone can change the meaning of a word, and this distinguishes the changed tones from
tone sandhi, which doesn't change a word's meaning. 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. Writing is done using Chinese characters and Mandarin vocabulary and grammar, but 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
Hoisanese-English Dictionary
at the bottom of this page contains a standard Taishanese romanization, used in its dictionary.
The sound represented by the
IPA symbol <ɬ> is particularly challenging, as it has no standard romanization. The digraph "lh" used above to represent this sound is used in
Totonac,
Chickasaw and
Choctaw, which are among several romanizations in the handful of languages that include the sound. The alternative "hl" is used in
Xhosa and
Zulu.
The following chart compares the plural pronouns among Taishanese, mainstream Cantonese, and Mandarin.
>
| Glossary |
Taishanese |
Mainstream
Cantonese |
Mandarin |
| transliteration |
IPA |
| we/us | ngoi |
[ŋɔɪ] |
ngo5 dei6 (我哋) |
wǒmen (我們)
|
| you (plural) | neik |
[neɪk] |
nei5 dei6 (你哋) |
nǐmen (你們)
|
| they/them | keik |
[keɪk] |
keoi5 dei6 (佢哋) |
tāmen (他們)
|
Official and current status
Taishanese has no official status in any country. It was originally the secondary language of
Ho Chi Minh City's
Cholon after Cantonese, but in recent years the number of Taishanese speakers in Vietnam has declined, giving way to Cantonese and
Hakka.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Taishan Dialect'.
|
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