Suzhou dialect

The Suzhou dialect (simplified Chinese: 苏州话; traditional Chinese: 蘇州話; pinyin: Sūzhōu huà; Suzhounese: Sou-tseu ghé-ghô 蘇州閒話), also known as Suzhounese, is the variety of Chinese traditionally spoken in the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, China. Suzhounese is a variety of Wu Chinese, and was traditionally considered the Wu Chinese prestige dialect. Suzhounese has a large vowel inventory and it is relatively conservative in initials by preserving voiced consonants from Middle Chinese.

Suzhounese
蘇州閒話 / 苏州闲话
Sou-tseu ghé-ghô
Pronunciation[soʊ˥tsøʏ˨˩ɦɛ˩˧ɦʊ˧]
Native toChina
RegionSuzhou and southeast Jiangsu province
Native speakers
approx. 5-7 million
Sino-Tibetan
  • Sinitic
    • Wu
      • Taihu
        • Suzhou–Shanghai–Jiaxing
          (Su-Hu-Jia)
          • Suzhounese
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
ISO 639-6suji
wuu-suh
Glottologsuzh1234[1]
Linguasphere79-AAA-dbb >
Suzhou dialect
Traditional Chinese蘇州話
Simplified Chinese苏州话
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese蘇州閒話

Distribution

Suzhou dialect is spoken within the city itself and the surrounding area, including migrants living in nearby Shanghai.

The Suzhou dialect is mutually intelligible with dialects spoken in its satellite cities such as Kunshan, Changshu, and Zhangjiagang, as well as those spoken in its former satellites Wuxi and Shanghai. It is also partially intelligible with dialects spoken in other areas of the Wu cultural sphere such as Hangzhou and Ningbo. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese or Standard Chinese; but, as all public schools and most broadcast communication in Suzhou use Mandarin exclusively, nearly all speakers of the dialect are at least bilingual. Owing to migration within China, many residents of the city cannot speak the local dialect but can usually understand it after a few months or years in the area.

History

A "ballad–narrative" (說唱詞話) known as "The story of Xue Rengui crossing the sea and Pacifying Liao" (薛仁貴跨海征遼故事), which is about the Tang dynasty hero Xue Rengui[2] is believed to have been written in the Suzhou dialect.[3]

Plural pronouns

Second- and third-person pronouns are suffixed with [toʔ] for the plural. The first-person plural is a separate root, [ni].[4]

Varieties

Some non-native speakers of Suzhou dialect speak Suzhou dialect in a "stylized variety" to tell tales.[5]

Phonology

Initials
Initials of the Suzhou dialect
  Labial Dental/Alveolar Alveolo-palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Plosive tenuis p t k ʔ
aspirated pʰ tʰ kʰ
voiced b d ɡ
Affricate tenuis ts tɕ
aspirated tsʰ tɕʰ
voiced dʑ
Fricative voiceless f s ɕ h
voiced v z ɦ
Lateral l

The Suzhou dialect has series of voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops, and voiceless and voiced fricatives. Moreover, palatalized initials also occur.

Finals
Vowel nuclei of the Suzhou dialect
Front Central Back
Unrounded Rounded
Close /i, ɪ/ /y, ʏ/ /ɵ/ /ʊ/
Mid /ɛ/ /ə/ /o/
Open /æ/ /a/ /ɑ/
Diphthong /øʏ, oʊ/
Finals of the Suzhou dialect[6]
Coda Open Nasal Glottal stop
Medial ∅jw ∅jw ∅jwɥ
Nucleus i i           
y y           
ɪ ɪ   ɪɲ       
ʏ ʏ   ʏɲ       
ɵ ɵjɵwɵ         
ʊ ʊ           
ɛ ɛ wɛ         
ə     ən wən əʔjəʔwəʔɥəʔ
o     oŋjoŋ  oʔjoʔ  
øʏ øʏ           
oʊ oʊ           
æ æjæ          
a     ãjãwã aʔjaʔwaʔ 
ɑ ɑjɑwɑ ɑ̃jɑ̃wɑ̃ ɑʔjɑʔ  
Syllabic continuants: [z̩] [z̩ʷ] [β̩~v̩] [m̩] [ŋ̩] [l̩]

The Suzhou dialect has a rare contrast between "fricative vowels" [i, y] and ordinary vowels [ɪ, ʏ]. As with Shanghainese, the Middle Chinese entering tone characters, which ended in [p t k], now end in a glottal stop [ʔ] in the Suzhou dialect, while Middle Chinese nasal endings [m n ŋ] have now merged as generic nasal finals or dropped nasalization altogether.

Tones

Suzhou is considered to have seven tones. However, since the tone split dating from Middle Chinese still depends on the voicing of the initial consonant, these constitute just three phonemic tones: ping, shang, and qu. (Ru syllables are phonemically toneless.)

Tone chart of Suzhou dialect
Tone numberTone nameTone lettersDescription
1 yin ping (陰平)˦ (44)high
2 yang ping (陽平)˨˨˦ (224)level-rising
3 shang (上)˥˨ (52)high falling
4 yin qu (陰去)˦˩˨ (412)dipping
5 yang qu (陽去)˨˧˩ (231)rising-falling
6 yin ru (陰入)˦ʔ (4)high checked
7 yang ru (陽入)˨˧ʔ (23)rising checked

In Suzhou, the Middle Chinese Shang tone has partially merged with the modern yin qu tone.

Romanization
gollark: Troubling. I will edit the rules.
gollark: Is it against the RULE™™ to vote crab on opinion polls?
gollark: You are BEES.
gollark: !randomlypickanumberwhichiseither0or1
gollark: He doesn't ACTUALLY have those points, by the glorious RULE™.

See also

References
  1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Suzhou". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. Boudewijn Walraven; Remco E. Breuker (2007). Remco E. Breuker (ed.). Korea in the middle: Korean studies and area studies : essays in honour of Boudewijn Walraven. Volume 153 of CNWS publications (illustrated ed.). CNWS Publications. p. 341. ISBN 978-9057891533. Retrieved 2012-03-10. A prosimetrical rendition, entitled Xue Rengui kuahai zheng Liao gushi 薛仁貴跨海征遼故事 (The story of Xue Rengui crossing the sea and Pacifying Liao), which shares its opening prose paragraph with the Xue Rengui zheng Liao shilüe, is preserved in a printing of 1471; it is one of the shuochang cihua 說唱詞話 (ballad-narratives
  3. Boudewijn Walraven; Remco E. Breuker (2007). Remco E. Breuker (ed.). Korea in the middle: Korean studies and area studies : essays in honour of Boudewijn Walraven. Volume 153 of CNWS publications (illustrated ed.). CNWS Publications. p. 342. ISBN 978-9057891533. Retrieved 2012-03-10. for telling and singing) which were discovered in the suburbs of Shanghai in 1967. While these shuochang cihua had been printed in modern-day Beijing, their language suggests that they had been composed in the Wu Chinese area of Suzhou and surroundings,
  4. Graham Thurgood; Randy J. LaPolla (2003). Graham Thurgood, Randy J. LaPolla (ed.). The Sino-Tibetan languages. Volume 3 of Routledge language family series (illustrated ed.). Psychology Press. p. 86. ISBN 0700711295. Retrieved 2012-03-10.
  5. George Melville Bolling; Linguistic Society of America; Bernard Bloch; Project Muse (2000). Language, Volume 76, Issues 1-2. Linguistic Society of America. p. 160. Retrieved 2012-03-10. She also examines a stylized variety of Suzhou Wu as used to tell stories by native speakers of another dialect.(Original from the University of Michigan)(Digitized Dec 17, 2010)
  6. Ling, Feng (2009). A phonetic study of the vowel system in Suzhou Chinese (Thesis). City University of Hong Kong.
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