Suzhou rap sounds like it has a French accent
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From Chas Belov:
Google Translate says that this song is in Suzhou topolect (it actually says "dialect" but thanks to you I know better). But I had to recognize a few words before I could convince myself it wasn't in French (which I also don't know). Later in the song it sounds more Chinese, but the rapper never really loses that French sound. Am I imagining things?
【苏州方言RAP】红中 Zyh 《三十三》PROD BY XVIBE
If you want to check your hearing, here's the title and most frequently repeated phrase:
MSM sānshísān
Shanghai 1se-zeq8-1se
三十三
"33"
Suzhounese (sou1 tseu1 ghe2 gho6 蘇州閒話) is the variety of Sinitic traditionally spoken in the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu, China. Suzhounese is a topolect of the Wu group of the Sinitic family of languages, and was traditionally considered the prestige variety of Wu. The Wu group has a total of 83,000,000 speakers. Among them, Suzhounese is close to Shanghainese and other Wu topolects in the region. Suzhounese has a large vowel inventory and it is relatively conservative in initials by preserving voiced consonants from Middle Sinitic. (source, with supplements)
The Wu varieties, especially that of Suzhou, are traditionally perceived as soft in the ears of speakers of both Wu and non-Wu languages, leading to the idiom "the tender speech of Wu" (wúnóngruǎnyǔ吴侬软语; 吳儂軟語). (Wikipedia)
Does that remind you of Parisian French?
All languages have a genius. Although far apart, it's conceivable that two completely unrelated tongues may possess certain similarities due to environmental or other circumstances. Conversely, two cognate languages that are physically close to each other may sound very different as a result of diverse criteria. Think of the tremendous linguistic variation of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. And people are always telling me how different Swabian is from other types of German. Here's an interesting example:
In 2009, the word Muggeseggele (a Swabian idiom), meaning the scrotum of a housefly, was voted in a readers' survey by Stuttgarter Nachrichten, the largest newspaper in Stuttgart, as the most beautiful Swabian word, well ahead of any other term.[8] The expression is used in an ironic way to describe a small unit of measure and is deemed appropriate to use in front of small children (compare Bubenspitzle). German broadcaster SWR's children's website, Kindernetz, explained the meaning of Muggeseggele in their Swabian dictionary in the Swabian-based TV series Ein Fall für B.A.R.Z.
I once owned a dictionary of Schwäbisch, and it was quite entertaining just to read through it.
Selected readings
- "Topolect: a Four-Body Problem" (7/18/24) — focus on Wu topolect and it Suzhounese variety; with a valuable bibliography for topolect studies
- "Yibin, Sichuanese, Cantonese, Mandarin…; topolect, dialect, language" (4/15/18)
- "Chinese-English rap" (2/3/16)
Victor Mair said,
February 22, 2025 @ 5:27 pm
From Alan Kennedy:
The Swabian expression muggeseggele reminds me of the Hungarian expression lepka fing, meaning something that is lighter than air, and translates as "butterfly farts." I find that to be almost poetic.
Julian said,
February 22, 2025 @ 5:59 pm
Once in a bike shop I was discussing with the wizened old mechanic the difference between an old style 27 inch wheel and a modern "700" wheel ( which actually has a bead seat diameter of 622mm)
He said: " the difference between them is only a bee's dick, but it's still enough to make them not interchangeable."
Julian said,
February 22, 2025 @ 6:02 pm
I probably would not have thought "sounds French" on my own initiative, but once primed it did remind me of Plastic Bertrand.
Maybe something to to with the intersection of rap style with a language that doesn't have a strong syllable stress?
Coby said,
February 22, 2025 @ 6:20 pm
Consider these pairs of languages that are regarded as, historically, the same language, but sound VERY different: Bulgarian and Macedonian, Danish and Norwegian, Portuguese and Galician. In each case, the second language of the pair sounds much more like a third, neighboring but distinct, language (Serbian, Swedish and Spanish, respectively).
Chas Belov said,
February 22, 2025 @ 7:46 pm
Thank you for your insights. I do remember a friend who spoke English, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Mandarin telling me Cantonese is so loud that it always sounds like they're fighting even when they're not, while Shanghainese is so soft it never sounds like they're fighting even when they are.
@Julian: Full disclosure that I'm not an expert in Chinese hiphop – for that, you might want to check out the Dongting series on hiphop in China – but I've heard quite a bit of Chinese hiphop in various topolects and this is the only song I've had this particular reaction to.
Chas Belov said,
February 22, 2025 @ 7:49 pm
Also thinking I occasionally need to listen to the lyrics to tell whether a particular song is in Japanese or Spanish.
Peter B. Golden said,
February 22, 2025 @ 7:55 pm
My wife, a native of Shanghai, spent part of the war years (WWII) in Suzhou (Suzi in Shanghai topolect). There were many family friends from there. The topolect is intelligible to Shanghainese speakers but is noted for its "softness" sounding more "feminine."
@ Chas Belov, the old saying was that two Suzhou people arguing sounded more affectionate than two Cantonese making love.
Chas Belov said,
February 22, 2025 @ 9:49 pm
@Peter B. Golden: ROFL re the old saying.
@Julian: Thinking about it, and noting that rock, not hiphop, is my first love in music, when I first started encountering hiphop in French and Mandarin, it just sounded wrong to me. I theorized that languages which were strong in final consonant stops, such as Korean or Cantonese, would be needed for good hiphop. Fortunately, I have been proven wrong over the years, or else my increased familiarity of Mandarin hiphop has led to it growing on me.
martin schwartz said,
February 23, 2025 @ 12:44 am
I found the Swabian interesting: voicing (and gemination??) of */-k/-,
and Upper German non-umlauting before velar, cf. German
Mücke and Sack. Yiddish, and no doubt many German topolects,
have /zekl/or /zekele/ as diminutive of 'bag', But Yiddish has only flig = German Fliege for '(a) fly'. Hungarian 'butterfly fart' is. charming indeed.
katarina said,
February 23, 2025 @ 12:56 am
I know two words in Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, and Shanghainese in which the Shanghainese pronunciation sounds soft and French. (These are the only two words in Taiwanese I know.)
The two words are chi fan 吃飯, literally “eat meal" or "eat a meal". Chi fan is the pinyin romanization. 吃飯 is a common phrase for "have a meal", "have lunch", "have dinner".
吃飯 in Mandarin is pronounced like English "tr fan",
吃飯 in Cantonese is pronounced like English "sig fahn",
吃飯 in Taiwanese is pronounced like English "jee-ah bung"
吃飯 in Shanghainese is pronounced like French "je vain" (like the
French words "je" and "vain").
Philip Taylor said,
February 23, 2025 @ 6:03 am
Katarina, I have very little familiarity with the last three languages that you list, but I have a reasonable familiarity with Mandarin and was surprised as your transliteration of Mandarin 吃飯 (chī fàn) as "tr fan" — in my experience, it sounds closer to /tʃə fæn/ (the schwa is not a good representation of the vowel sound in " chī", but my point is really regarding your use of "r" in the transcription). Would you be willing to comment ? Incidentally, my Vietnamese mother-in-law, who speaks fluent Mandarin, pronounces it /ʃə fæn/, with a falling tone on the first element and a different initial for 吃.
David Marjanović said,
February 23, 2025 @ 8:50 am
No voicing. Almost throughout Upper German, all obstruents are voiceless in all environments. Indeed, for me, the most difficult sounds in French are [b d g], followed by [z ʒ]…!
However, Swabian has succumbed to Inderior German Gonsonand Weagening: the triple contrast of long fortes, short fortes and short lenes has collapsed completely. The Swabian outcome is that all obstruents are short lenes now, and accordingly all attempts to write the plosives use b d g (or bb dd gg after short vowels).
David Marjanović said,
February 23, 2025 @ 9:04 am
The rap sounds fascinating, but not French; what it has in common with French (in contrast to Mandarin) are the occasional nasal vowels and the frequent [ɛ]. There are long passages that I would have mistaken for Mandarin (…but that's because I don't know enough vocabulary in Mandarin, by far).
Also noteworthy (and very much unlike French) are the numerous syllabic consonants. Even [t͡ɕ̩] occurs as a voiceless syllable.
三十三 comes out as [sɛð̞əsɛ] with a barely-there approximant [ð̞].
Peter B. Golden said,
February 23, 2025 @ 9:44 am
@Katarina: In Shanghainese it is pronounced: chi ve [chīq váe] "eat rice." Nong chiq gu vae va "have you eaten rice?" is a greeting, like "how are you?"
Andreas Johansson said,
February 23, 2025 @ 9:56 am
Speaking of languages that "sound angry" etc, French tends to sound angry to me, to the point I've on occasion had to ask my wife whether they're actually arguing or not when she speaks with her francophone relatives.
Kate Bunting said,
February 23, 2025 @ 10:32 am
As one who knows nothing of Chinese or any Far Eastern language, but does understand French, I agree that some of the vowels sound a bit French. (I would know it wasn't because there are no words I recognise!)
katarina said,
February 23, 2025 @ 11:24 am
@Philip Taylor
Philip, thanks for your comment. I think I was correct. Wikipedia "Mandarin" says that chi 吃 is /ʈ͡ʂʰ/, aspirated retroflex. However, your mother-in-law may also be correct because Wikipedia "Pinyin" says that pinyin "chi" is [ʈʂʰ]~[ʃ], with a note that [ʃ] is "Taipei Mandarin". As to tone, my 吃 is not falling tone but first, or level, tone. I'd have no trouble recognizing your mother-in-law's 吃 though.
KevinM said,
February 23, 2025 @ 12:09 pm
Thread winner: "Inderior German Gonsonand Weagening". Magical, until I figured it out.
katarina said,
February 23, 2025 @ 12:34 pm
@ Peter B. Golden
Thanks for your comment. Wikipedia "Shanghainese", says
吃飯 in Shanghainese is tsʰiɪʔ ve ⟨tshiq ve⟩.
I thought I heard a French pronunciation. I don't speak Shanghainese, but understand a bit of it. I heard 吃飯 pronounced by my son-in-law whose family were Shanghainese and spoke Shanghainese.
Yes, fan 飯 means "cooked rice, meal" and chifan 吃飯 means "eat (a meal, lunch, dinner), and "You mei you 吃飯？（Did you eat?）“
means "Hello" in some areas. When my landlord (from Jiangxi province) in New York said
“有沒有吃飯 （Did you eat?)" to me whenever we met, I was taken aback because it doesn't mean "Hello" in my dialect. I thought he was always thinking about food until my mom told me it can mean "Hello".
katarina said,
February 23, 2025 @ 12:37 pm
@ Dave Marjanovic
I listened to the video and thought 三十三 "three ten three (thirty three)" sounded French. I mean the sɛ (三）rhymed with
fan 飯 in chi 吃飯.
katarina said,
February 23, 2025 @ 1:41 pm
I heard san 三 as rhyming with Shanghainese fan 飯 ve in
chifan 吃飯。
Yves Rehbein said,
February 23, 2025 @ 6:51 pm
I doubt that seggele is correct, the problem being the premise. Any other explanation would work just as well, if it does not have to make sense.
Mucke[n]-Säckele[in] "spec. of minute distance" (Fischer et al, Schwäbisches Handwörterbuch, translation mine; NB: "wohl allgem., vgl. CBopp 13", Fischer, Schwäbisches Wörterbuch, Nachträge) seems to be unknown outside of Swabian, missing in Palatian, Elsatian, Lothringian and Swiss German, proving VHM's point, but the morpheme is productive, often conflated with different words and subject to lexical replacement as well as narrowing and metaphor.
A possible argument in favor is Mucke[n]-Schuh "figurative, trifle" (Fischer op. cit. vol. IV, translation mine) because sack is cognate with sock, from Latin, Greek, which could mean shoe (cf. "sich auf die Socken machen"). One might even think of a small step according "The basis of coming and going" (VHM 2024). Besides, a Romance connection would also speak in favor of the French sound (compare mouche).
I concede that reading through the dictionaries can be quite entertaining, but I shouldn't stress out about it. As it were I don't give a rat's ass.
David Marjanović said,
February 23, 2025 @ 8:28 pm
Huh? It makes perfect sense if you don't have a microscope and therefore have no idea of insect anatomy.
German Sack m. and Socke(n m.) f. are from Latin saccus and soccus, which in turn are from Greek σάκκος and… συκχίς, supposedly. In any case they're not cognate.
That's from musca. It's not cognate with midge/Mücke.
Yves Rehbein said,
February 24, 2025 @ 12:26 pm
"It makes perfect sense if you […] have no idea […]" – as I was saying.
Another similarity to Sack might be seen in the expression "so viel wie eine Mücke am Schwanz weg trägt" (Spalding, An historical dictionary of German figurative usage). That makes no sense at all.
A different expression, Mückenseiger "pedant, pettifogger", seems to go back to Mathew 23:24 (Spalding), "blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel" (KJV).
ohwilleke said,
February 25, 2025 @ 4:09 pm
@David Marjanović
I would agree. Having studied French, I would never confuse them (and the vocalist's voice is also very East Asian), but the primary similarity is how nasal it is, unlike most Chinese topolects I've heard, and secondarily, the almost guttural vowel sound found in the French word "rouge" (which I don't know how to express in the IPA).
But aside from that it is pretty centered in sounding like a Chinese language, as opposed to the sounds of any of the Asian languages in the vicinity.