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From a native Northeasterner:

Many people think that Dōngběi huà 东北话 (Northeastern Topolect) = Pǔtōnghuà 普通话 (Modern Standard Mandarin). Nononono! Although phonologically Dōngběi huà 东北话 (Northeastern Topolect) sounds like Pǔtōnghuà 普通话 (Modern Standard Mandarin), it is not Mandarin at all because of its distinctive lexical inventory. Yesterday we talked about hermaphrodites, or intersex persons, which are called “èryǐzi” (sounds like 二椅子 (lit., "two chairs"), though I don’t know which are the Chinese characters at all); and also breasts as zhāzhā — e.g., a small kid would say to his/her mom “Wǒ yào chī / mō 我要吃/摸 zhāzhā” ("I want to nibble / touch zhāzhā") when he/she looks for the mama’s breasts; and also xuán了 for “a lot” — e.g. "Lǎoshī liú de zuòyè xuánle 老师留的作业xuán了" ("the teacher gave a lot of homework")，"Dàjiē shàng yǒu xuánle rénle 大街上有xuán了人了" ("the street is crowded with so many people")，or "Tā de wánjù xuánle 他的玩具xuán了" ("he has a lot of toys"). Note that we don’t say "Tā yǒu xuánle wánjù 他有xuán了玩具"，but rather "Tā de wánjù xuánle 他的玩具xuán了"。Funny grammar :) Again, I don't know how to write these words in characters.

When will people ever wake up to the fact that Sinitic words are not dependent upon Sinographs?!

Selected readings

• "A Northeastern topolectal morpheme without a corresponding character" (6/9/20)
• "No character for the most frequent morpheme in Taiwanese" (12/10/13)
• "Taiwanese Morphemes in Search of Chinese Characters", by Robert L. Cheng (Zheng Liangwei), Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6.2 (June, 1978), 306-314.
• "Dongbei Survival Guide:  You can be funny and emotional in Dongbeihua, but be careful," by Ginger Huang, The World of Chinese
• "Northeastern Mandarin"
• "Russian Loans in Northeast and Northwest Mandarin: The Power of Script to Influence Pronunciation" (1/23/11)
• "Manchu loans in northeast Mandarin" (10/7/13)
• "Varieties of Mandarin" (10/25/17)
• "The infinitude of Chinese characters" (9/9/20) — with a very long bibliography

July 15, 2022 @ 7:42 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Grammar, Lexicon and lexicography, Topolects, Writing systems

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