[This is a guest post from Mok Ling.]<\/p>\r\n
Hainanese<\/a> is rather atypical of Southern Min (\u95a9\u5357) languages, with lots of innovations and retentions not seen in other varieties in the region: it has, for example, implosive consonants (which it shares with Vietnamese), as well as glottal-final \u4e0a\u8072 (a retention from Old Chinese). <\/p>\r\n Here are some examples of the \u53bb-\u5e73 change, transcribed from my own speech (these are arranged in no particular order):<\/p>\r\n \u8a71 (\"language\") \u0294i\u025b\u00b2\u2074 *As for \u5171, my mother taught me very carefully to read it as g\u014dng in Mandarin rather than g\u00f2ng. I thought it had to have been dialectal influence, but \u8d99\u5143\u4efb Chao Yuen-ren's 1962 article \"What is Correct Chinese\" shows that I wasn't alone in being taught this antiquated pronunciation.<\/p>\r\n [end of guest post]<\/p>\r\n VHM:\u00a0 I myself remember very clearly being taught to say gongheguo<\/i> \u5171\u548c\u570b (\"republic\") and gongchandang<\/i> \u5171\u7522\u9ee8 (Communist Party) with the first syllable of each being in the first tone, then being surprised later when the PRC started pushing fourth tone for those first syllables.\u00a0 This sort of thing happened with many other words as well, with, for example, xingqi<\/i> \u661f\u671f (\"week\"), which I had been taught as first tone followed by second tone, becoming\u00a0 two first tones.<\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n Selected readings<\/b><\/p>\r\n [This is a guest post from Mok Ling.] Hainanese is rather atypical of Southern Min (\u95a9\u5357) languages, with lots of innovations and retentions not seen in other varieties in the region: it has, for example, implosive consonants (which it shares with Vietnamese), as well as glottal-final \u4e0a\u8072 (a retention from Old Chinese). The atypical feature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,292,215,224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phonetics-and-phonology","category-reconstructions","category-tones","category-topolects"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65537"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65563,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65537\/revisions\/65563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The atypical feature I've found most mysterious is the tendency to pronounce the Middle Chinese \u53bb tone as \u9670\u5e73. I haven't managed to find a consistent pattern in the words affected by this tonal shift.
Just for context: I unfortunately do not know which part of the island my grandparents are from. I was told ethnic tensions within the Chinese community in the island of Tanjung Pinang (where they eventually settled) discouraged them from transmitting any kind of information about this to their children. Looking at phonetic data compiled online (from the dialect dictionary kaom.net as well as recordings of Hainanese), it seems that our family lect most resembles Qionghainese (\u74ca\u6d77\u8a71).<\/p>\r\n
\u756b (\"to draw\") i\u025b\u00b2\u2074
\u82b1 (\"flower\") \u0294\u0266i\u025b\u00b2\u2074
\u865f (\"number\") \u0294\u0266\u0254\u00b2\u2074
\u6b65 (\"step\") \u0294\u0253\u0254u\u00b2\u2074
\u547d (\"life; destiny\") mia\u00b2\u2074
\u5229 (\"sharp\") lai\u00b2\u2074
\u5229 (only in \u5229\u7528) li\u00b2\u2074
\u7528 (\"use\", only as a noun) i\u0254\u014b\u00b2\u2074
\u4e8c (\"2\", as a cardinal and seemingly only word-initially) \u0294\u0257zi\u00b2\u2074
\u5171 (\"and\") ka\u00b2\u2074*
\u5f04 (\"to joke\") la\u014b\u00b2\u2074
\u8ce3 (\"to sell\") \u0294\u0253\u0254i\u00b2\u2074<\/p>\r\n\r\n