Central Plains Mandarin

Central Plains Mandarin, or Zhongyuan Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 中原官话; traditional Chinese: 中原官話; pinyin: zhōngyuán guānhuà), is a variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in the central and southern parts of Shaanxi, Henan, southwestern part of Shanxi, southern part of Gansu, far southern part of Hebei, northern Anhui, northern parts of Jiangsu, southern Xinjiang and southern Shandong.[4]

Central Plains Mandarin
Zhongyuan Guanhua
Region	Yellow River Plain
Native speakers	(170 million cited 1982)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Mandarin Central Plains Mandarin
Writing system	Chinese characters, Xiao'erjing (historical)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
ISO 639-6	zgyu
Linguist List	cmn-zho
Glottolog	huab1238  Central Plain Guanhua[2] zhon1236  Zhongyuan[3]
Linguasphere	79-AAA-bf

The archaic dialect in Peking opera is a form of Zhongyuan Mandarin.

Among Hui people, Zhongyuan Mandarin is sometimes written with the Arabic alphabet, called Xiao'erjing ("Children's script").

Subdialects

• Zheng-Cao region: e.g. Kaifeng dialect, Zhengzhou dialect, Nanyang dialect
• Luo-Xu region: e.g. Luoyang dialect, Xuzhou dialect
• Xin-Beng (信蚌) region: e.g. Xinyang dialect, Bengbu dialect
• Fenhe (汾河) region: e.g. Linfen dialect, Wanrong dialect
• Cai-Lu region: e.g. Zhumadian dialect, Jining dialect
• Qin-Long (秦陇) region: e.g. Xining dialect, Dunhuang dialect, Gangou dialect (influenced by Monguor)
• Guanzhong region (关中话), e.g. Xi'an dialect
• Longzhong (陇中) region: e.g. Tianshui dialect
• Nanjiang (南疆) Region: e.g. Yanqi dialect, Tulufan dialect
  • Dungan language, written in Cyrillic, introduced many Russian loanwords, spoken mainly in Chu Valley and Fergana Valley in Central Asia

Phonology

In Central Plains Mandarin, some phonological changes have affected certain syllables but not Standard Chinese.

[p] and [pʰ] have shifted to [p͜f] before the vowel [u].[5]

	布	跛	坡	樸
Middle Chinese Initial	[p]	[p]	[pʰ]	[pʰ]
Pinyin	bù	bǒ	pō	pǔ
Standard Mandarin	[pû]	[pwò]	[pʰwó]	[pʰù]
Central Plains Mandarin	[p͜fu]	[p͜fo]	[p͜fʰo]	[p͜fʰu]

Standard Mandarin's [t͡ʂ], [t͡ʂʰ] and have shifted to [p͜f] before [u]. [ʂ] has shifted to [f] before [u].

	豬	初	书	熟
Middle Chinese Initial	[ʈ]	[t͡ʃʰ]	[ɕ]	[ʑ]
Pinyin	zhū	chū	shū	shú
Standard Mandarin	[ʈʂú]	[ʈʂʰú]	[ʂú]	[ʂǔ]
Central Plains Mandarin	[p͜fu]	[p͜fu]	[fu]	[fu]

See also

• Zhongyuan culture
• Central Plains (China), also called "Zhongyuan"

References

Citations

1. Gu 2009, p. 214.
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Central Plain Guanhua". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
3. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Zhongyuan". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
4. Chappell 2002, p. 244; Gu 2009, p. 214; Chirkova 2008.
5. Mian Yan, Margaret (2006). Introduction To Chinese Dialectology. Germany: LINCOM EUROPA. pp. 73–74.

Sources

• Chappell, Hilary (2002), "The Universal Syntax of Semantic Primes in Mandarin Chinese", in Goddard, Cliff; Wierzbicka, Anna (eds.), Meaning and Universal Grammar, Studies in Language Companion Series, v. 60, Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, ISBN 1588112659, ISSN 0165-7763, OCLC 752499720, retrieved 17 November 2014
• Gu, Yueguo (2009) [2006], "Chinese", in Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah (eds.), Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World (1^st ed.), Oxford: Elsevier, ISBN 9780080877747, OCLC 264358379, retrieved 17 November 2014
• Chirkova, Ekaterina (2008), "Gˇei 'give' in Beijing and beyond" (PDF), Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, Paris: Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale (37): 3–42, ISSN 0153-3320, OCLC 793454655, retrieved 20 November 2014