Longdu dialect

The Longdu dialect is the most widespread dialect of the Zhongshan Min language division within Southern Min Chinese. Native Speakers originated from towns of Dachong and Shaxi, Guangdong (formerly known as Longdu area) in Zhongshan in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong. Despite its close proximity, Longdu is not very closely related to the surrounding dialects in the region, which belong to the Yue group. As such, Longdu forms a "dialect island" of Min speakers (two other Min enclaves exist in Zhongshan, Sanxiang and Nanlang). Its native speakers generally understand Cantonese, but not vice versa.

Longdu dialect
隆都話
Native toChina
RegionDachong and Shaxi, Guangdong, Hawaii, US-Canada Chinatowns
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologlong1252[1]
Location of Zhongshan within China

According to Søren Egerod, who published an extensive study of the dialect based on fieldwork conducted in 1949, the vocabulary consists of three layers:

  • a pre-Tang colloquial layer, which seems to be related to the Fuzhou dialect,
  • a Tang-period colloquial layer, which seems to be related to various Southern Min varieties, and
  • a layer of literary readings based on the Shiqi dialect, the local Yue variety.[2]

The Longdu dialect is a mother tongue of many Overseas Chinese and is slowly disappearing due to the emigration of people from the Longdu Area.

See also
  • List of Chinese dialects

References
  1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Longdu". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. Egerod, Søren (1956). The Lungtu Dialect: A Descriptive and Historical Study of a South Chinese Idiom. E. Munksgaard. pp. 280–281.
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