Lower Yangtze Mandarin
Encyclopedia
Lower Yangtze or Xiajiang Mandarin. also called Jianghuai Mandarin after the Yangtze (Jiang) and Huai River
s, is one of the most divergent of the Mandarin dialects, as it neighbors the Wu, Hui, and Gan Chinese languages.
The Portuguese Chinese Dictionary (PCD) written by missionaries during the Ming dynasty categorized several Jianghuai dialects with rounded finals. The eastern and southeastern variants of Jianghuai contain these rounded finals, Nanjing dialect, on the other hand, is located in another group.
Lower Yangtze Mandarin is spoken in parts of Anhui
and Hubei
provinces north of the Yangtze, as well as some areas of Jiangsu
north of the river, most notably in the former capital of Nanjing
, as well as Jiujiang
in Jiangxi
province. It is one of the few Mandarin dialects to retain the entering tone
(ru sheng 入聲) of Middle Chinese
(as a final glottal stop
) like the Jin dialect, and for this retention of the entering tone Jianghuai is compared to its non-Mandarin neighbors to the south. The retension of the rusheng is considered a unique feature of Jianghuai which sets it apart from other the other Mandarin dialects. It has largely lost initial n, replacing it with l.
Some Jianghuai dialects have five tones due to the preservation of the rù tone of Middle Chinese, more than four toned Standard Mandarin which lost the rù tone.
In Jianghuai, verbs which meant "to share, to gather, to mix, to acompany" gave rise to disposal markers which mean "and, with" like 跟Gen.
Jiangsu province contains the border in which Jianghuai and Northern Mandarin are split.
Jianghuai Mandarin shares some characteristics with Ming dynasty Southern Mandarin.
Peking opera got its start in parts of Anhui and Hubei which spoke this dialect.
Jianghuai originally included the Huizhou dialect, but it is currently classified separately from Jianghuai.
Jianghuai Mandarin shares an "old literary layer" as a stratum with southern dialects like Minnan, Hakka, Gan, and Hangzhou dialects, which it does not share with Northern Mandarin. Sino Vietnamese also shares some of these characteristics. The stratum in Minnan specifically consist of Zeng group and Geng group's "n" and "t" finals when an "i" initial is present.
Professor of Chinese at Rutgers University, Richard Vanness Simmons claims that the Hangzhou dialect
, rather than being Wu as it was classified by Yuen Ren Chao
, is a Mandarin dialect closely related to Jianghuai Mandarin. Hangzhou dialect is still classified under Wu. Chao had developed a "Common Wu Syllabry" for the Wu dialects. Simmons claimed that had Chao compared Hangzhou dialect to the Wu syllabry and Jianghuai mandarin, he would have found more similarities to Jianghuai.
Some works of literature produced in Yangzhou, such as Qingfengzha, a novel, contain Jianghuai Mandarin. People in Yangzhou identified by the dialect they speak, locals spoke the dialect, as opposed to sojourners, who spoke dialects like Huizhou or Wu. This led to the formation of identity based on dialect. Large amounts of merchants from Huizhou lived in Yangzhou and effectively were responsible for keeping the town afloat.
67 million people speak Jianghuai Mandarin. Some features of Jianghua mandarin include retention of Middle Chinese syllable final stops. Like Wu, the glottal stop has superseeded the original Middle Chinese p, t, k, and three way place contrast has also gone extinct.
Some Chinese linguists like Ting have claimed that Jianghuai is mostly Wu containing a superstratum of Mandarin.
The linguist Dan Xu suggested that Jianghuai Mandarin is an intermidiary with Standard Mandarin and Wu dialect regarding the occurrence of postpositions in Chinese dialects.
The Chinese Academy of Social Science was behind the separation of the Hui dialects from the Jianghuai Mandarin dialects in 1987.
Hefei, and other Jianghuai mandarin dialects, along with Taiyuan and other Jin dialects has gone through the process of a glottal stop replacing consonant endings. While most Mandarin dialects and the Wenzhou dialect have completely dropped Middle Chinese stop endings such as p, t, k, Jianghuai Mandarin, Jin, and Wu dialect converted them into a glottal stop. Having a single entering tone with a glottal stop is shared by Jin, Mandarin, and Wu dialects.
Vocalic distinctions are more common in Jianghuai Mandarin than the Jin Chinese.
The linguist Matthew Y. Chen noted that since the CVq syllables which are related to Middle Chinese ton IV are preserved in Jianghuai Mandarin that splitting Jin Chines from Mandarin on the basis that Middle Chinese tone IV was preserved in Jin made no sense. He did note that there was a separate reason to split Jin from Northern Mandarin, since it has a unique tone sandhi.
When Jianghuai Mandarin and Wu were compared to dialects from China's southeastern coast, it was conluded "that chain-type shifts in Chinese follow the same general rules as have been revealed by Labov for American and British English dialects."
Jianghuai (eastern) Mandarin and Northern Mandarin do not share a lot of words, frequently a lot of Jianghuai Mandarin words have no Northern Mandarin cognates, besides cognates that do exist between the two Mandarins have multiple forms.
The Rugaohua dialect of Jianghuai does not follow the T3 sandhi rule which most other Mandarin dialects follow, with T3 being absent from it. Linguists speculate that the Beijing dialect also eliminated T3 sandhi, but it was resurrected for modern Standard Mandarin (Putonghua).
Nanjing Jianghuai Mandarin has preserve the glottal stop as a final and separates the entering tone unlike Northern Mandarin
or Southwestern Mandarin
, like Northern Mandarin, it keeps the retroflex initials. In Jianghuai Mandarin, the n sound does not exist, being pronounced as L, the opposite occurred in Southwestern Mandarin, where now only the n sound is present while L merged into it, Northern Mandarin on the other hand, keeps both n and L separate. Jianghuai, like Northern Mandarin, also separates the F and X sound in "xu", while in Southwestern Mandarin, X merged into f so that it is pronounced as "fu". In Jianghuai, əŋ has "merged" into iŋ, while the opposite has occurred in Southwestern Mandarin, Northern Mandarin keeps both as separate sounds.
The two finals ŋ and n are the only ones that exist in dialects of Mandarin. The final stops merged into a glottal stop in Jianghuai Mandarin, while in the majority of southwestern Mandarin they are completely eliminated, Northern and Northwest Mandarin have undergone both changes in their varieties of dialects. Nanjing Mandarin is an exception to the normal occurrence of the i, y and u medials in Mandarin, along with is eastern Shanxi and some southwest Mandarin dialects..
Verbs meaning giving function as a passive agent marker or a disposal construction direct object marker in the Zhongyuan, Jianghuai, and southwestern Mandarin. This is also shared by the grammatization of "gei" 给 in Standard Mandarin, since all four are Mandarin dialects.
When Chinese people were subjected to listening to various dialects such as Northern Mandarin (Yantai dialect), Standard Mandarin (Putonghua), and Jianghuai Mandarin (Rugao dialect of Jiangsu), "cross dialectal" differences appeared in their reactions.
, Zhu Yuanzhang and many of his military and civil officials.
The "Guanhua koine" of the early Ming era was based on Jianghuai Guanhua (Jianghuai Mandarin). Western missionaries and Korean Hangul
writings of the Ming Guanhua and Nanjing dialect showed differences, which pointed to the Guanhua being a koine and mixture of various dialects strongly based on Jianghuai.
In Matteo Ricci
's "Dicionário Português-Chinês", words in this dictionary documenteed the Ming dynasty Mandarin. A number of words appeared to be derived from Jianghuai Mandarin dialect, such as "pear, jujube, shirt, ax, hoe, joyful, to speak, to bargain, to know, to urinate, to build a house, busty, and not yet."
Some linguists have studied the influence which Nanjing Jianghuai Mandarin had on Ming dynasty guanhua/Mandarin. Although the early Ming dynasty Mandarin/Guanhua was a koine based on Nanjing dialect, it was not entirely identical to it, with some non Jianghuai characteristics being found in it. Francisco Varo
advised that to learn Chinese one must acquire it from "Not just any Chinese, but only those who have the natural gift of speaking the Mandarin language well, such as those natives of the Province of Nan king, and of other provinces where the Mandarin tongue is spoken well.
Jianghuai Mandarin, along with Northern Mandarin
, formed the standard for Baihua before and during the Qing dynasty
up till its replacement by modern Standard Mandarin
. This Baihua was used by writers all over China regardless of the dialect they spoke. Chinese writers who spoke other dialects had to use the grammar and vocabulary of Jianghuai and Northern Mandarin in order for the majority of Chinese to understand their writing, by contrast, Chinese who did not speak southern dialects would not be able to understand a Southern dialect's writing.
Jianghuai played an imporant role in the formation of the Beijing dialect
. The Beijing dialect was created from a mixture of the various northern dialects, and influences from Jianghuai.
Dialect has also been used as a tool for regional identitity and politics in the Jiangbei
and Jiangnan
regions. While the city of Yangzhou
was the center of trade, flourishing and prosperous, it was considered part of Jiangnan
, which was known to be wealthy, even though Yangzhou was north of the Yangzi river. Once Yangzhou's wealth prosperity were gone, it was then considered to be part of Jiangbei, the "backwater". After Yangzhou was removed from Jiangnan, its residents decided to no longer speak Jianghuai Mandarin, which was the dialect of Yangzhou. They instead replaced Mandarin with Wu and spoke Taihu Wu dialects
. In Jiangnan itself, multiple subdialects of Wu fought for the position of prestige dialect.
During the Han dynasty, Old Chinese
was divided into dialects, one of them was called "Chǔ-Jiāng-huái", 憐 lián meant "to love" in this dialect.
The original dialect of Nanjing was the Wu dialect in the Eastern Jin. After the Wu Hu uprising
, the Jin Emperor and many northern Chinese fled south. The new capital of Eastern Jin was created at Jiankang
, where modern day Nanjing is today, it was during this time that the Nanjing dialect started to transform into Jianghuai Mandarin from Wu. Further events, such as Hou Jing's rebellions during the Liang dynasty and the Sui dynasty invasion of the Chen dynasty resulted in Jiankang's destruction, during the Ming dynasty, Ming Taizu relocated southerners from below Yangzi and made Nanjing the capital, and during the Taiping Rebellion
, Taiping rebels seized Nanjing and made it the capital of the Taiping Kingdom, the fighting resulted in the loss of the population of Nanjing. These events all played in role in forming the Nanjing dialect of today.
In Nanjing, Mandarin became the dominant language after the Taiping Rebellion.
Immigrants from Northern China during the middle of the Song dynasty moved south, bringing a speech type from which Northern Wu and Jianghuai reading patterns both derive from, these northern immigrants almost totally took over from the original inhabitants on the Yangtze's northern bank. Jiang-huai, like other dialects of Chinese has two forms for pronuncing words, the Bai (common, vulgar), and the Wen (literary), the Bai forms appear to preserve more ancient forms of speech dating from before the the mass migration in the Song dynasty which brought in the wen pronunciations.
During the Ming dynasty Wu speakers moved into Jianghuai speaking regions, influencing the Tairu and Tongtai dialects of Jianghuai.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties Jianghuai speakers moved into Hui dialect areas.
Jianghuai Mandarin is currently overtaking Wu dialect as the language of multiple counties in Jiangsu. An example of this is Zaicheng Town in Lishui County
, both Jianghuai and Wu dialect were spoken in several towns in Lishui, with Wu being spoken by the greater amount of people in more towns than Jianghuai. The Wu dialect is called "old Zaicheng Speech", while Jianghuai dialect is called "new Zaicheng speech", with Wu dialect being driven rapidly to extinction. Only old people use it to talk to relatives. The Jianghuai dialect was present there since about a century, even though all the surrounding areas around the town are Wu speaking. Jianghuai was always confined inside the town itself until the 60's, in the present it is overtaking Wu.
Hongchao dialects 洪巢片
The largest and most widespread branch of Jianghuai Mandarin, mostly concentrated in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, with smaller minorities in Zhejiang province. It is divided into the Western Huai dialects and the Eastern Huai dialects, with the Western Huai dialects being the more numerous of the two.
Tongtai dialects
通泰片, also known as Tairu dialect 泰如片
Mostly spoken in the area from southern Yancheng
to northern Nantong
cities in Jiangsu province.
Huangxiao dialects 黃孝片
Mostly spoken in eastern Hubei province and northern Jiangxi, particularly the area around Jiujiang
.
Isolates
The Wuchang, Wuhan, and Tianmen dialects are spoken around the Chang-jiang lakes.
Taixing dialect. Taixing dialect uses the character "na" for "disposal construction".
Anqing dialect.
"Tongdao, Ningyuan, Longshan, Yizhang, Zhijiang" are also all Jianghuai Mandarin dialects.
Huai River
The Huai River is a major river in China. The Huai River is located about mid-way between the Yellow River and Yangtze River, the two largest rivers in China, and like them runs from west to east...
s, is one of the most divergent of the Mandarin dialects, as it neighbors the Wu, Hui, and Gan Chinese languages.
Features and Location
67 million people speak Jianghuai Mandarin. Some features of Jianghua mandarin include retention of Middle Chinese syllable final stops.The Portuguese Chinese Dictionary (PCD) written by missionaries during the Ming dynasty categorized several Jianghuai dialects with rounded finals. The eastern and southeastern variants of Jianghuai contain these rounded finals, Nanjing dialect, on the other hand, is located in another group.
Lower Yangtze Mandarin is spoken in parts of Anhui
Anhui
Anhui is a province in the People's Republic of China. Located in eastern China across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, it borders Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a tiny...
and Hubei
Hubei
' Hupeh) is a province in Central China. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Lake Dongting...
provinces north of the Yangtze, as well as some areas of Jiangsu
Jiangsu
' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. The name comes from jiang, short for the city of Jiangning , and su, for the city of Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is "苏" , the second character of its name...
north of the river, most notably in the former capital of Nanjing
Nanjing
' is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on several occasions...
, as well as Jiujiang
Jiujiang
Jiujiang , formerly transliterated Kiukiang, is a prefecture-level city located on the southern shores of the Yangtze River in northwest Jiangxi Province, China. It is the second-largest prefecture-level city in Jiangxi province, the largest one being Nanchang...
in Jiangxi
Jiangxi
' is a southern province in the People's Republic of China. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south, it shares a border with Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to...
province. It is one of the few Mandarin dialects to retain the entering tone
Entering tone
A checked tone, commonly known by its Chinese calque entering tone , is one of four syllable types in the phonology in Middle Chinese which are commonly translated as tone. However, it is not a tone in the phonetic sense, but rather describes a syllable that ends in a stop consonant, such as p, t,...
(ru sheng 入聲) of Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
(as a final glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
) like the Jin dialect, and for this retention of the entering tone Jianghuai is compared to its non-Mandarin neighbors to the south. The retension of the rusheng is considered a unique feature of Jianghuai which sets it apart from other the other Mandarin dialects. It has largely lost initial n, replacing it with l.
Some Jianghuai dialects have five tones due to the preservation of the rù tone of Middle Chinese, more than four toned Standard Mandarin which lost the rù tone.
In Jianghuai, verbs which meant "to share, to gather, to mix, to acompany" gave rise to disposal markers which mean "and, with" like 跟Gen.
Jiangsu province contains the border in which Jianghuai and Northern Mandarin are split.
Jianghuai Mandarin shares some characteristics with Ming dynasty Southern Mandarin.
Peking opera got its start in parts of Anhui and Hubei which spoke this dialect.
Literary and colloquial readings
The existence of literary and colloquial readings (文白异读), is a notable feature in Jianghuai Mandarin.| Example | Colloquial Reading | Literary Reading | Meaning | Standard Mandarin Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tɕia | tɕiɪ | oblique | ɕiɛ | |
| tiɪʔ | tsəʔ | pick | tʂai | |
| kʰɪ | tɕʰy | go | tɕʰy | |
| ka | tɕy | cut | tɕy | |
| xa | ɕia | down | ɕia | |
| xoŋ | xən | across | xəŋ | |
| æ̃ | iɪ̃ | strict | ian | |
| kʰuɛ | kua | hang | kua | |
| sən | tən | crouch | tuən | |
| kaŋ | xoŋ | rainbow | xoŋ | |
Relations to other dialects
A linguist named Cheng evaluated the extent of relationship between dialects by using Pearson's correlation coefficients. The result was that Eastern dialects of Jianghuai "cluster", with the Xiang and Gan dialects when using a 35 world list, while Northern and Southern Mandarin were nowhere in the cluster with Eastern Jianghuai, while Northern and Southern were supposedly "genetic" relatives of Jianghuai Mandarin.Jianghuai originally included the Huizhou dialect, but it is currently classified separately from Jianghuai.
Jianghuai Mandarin shares an "old literary layer" as a stratum with southern dialects like Minnan, Hakka, Gan, and Hangzhou dialects, which it does not share with Northern Mandarin. Sino Vietnamese also shares some of these characteristics. The stratum in Minnan specifically consist of Zeng group and Geng group's "n" and "t" finals when an "i" initial is present.
Professor of Chinese at Rutgers University, Richard Vanness Simmons claims that the Hangzhou dialect
Hangzhou dialect
The Hangzhou dialect, or Rhangzei Rhwa , is spoken in the city of Hangzhou and its immediate suburbs, but excluding areas further away from Hangzhou such as Xiāoshān and Yúháng . The number of speakers of the Hangzhou dialect has been estimated to be about 1.2 to 1.5 million...
, rather than being Wu as it was classified by Yuen Ren Chao
Yuen Ren Chao
Chao Yuen Ren was a Chinese American linguist and amateur composer. He made important contributions to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar....
, is a Mandarin dialect closely related to Jianghuai Mandarin. Hangzhou dialect is still classified under Wu. Chao had developed a "Common Wu Syllabry" for the Wu dialects. Simmons claimed that had Chao compared Hangzhou dialect to the Wu syllabry and Jianghuai mandarin, he would have found more similarities to Jianghuai.
Some works of literature produced in Yangzhou, such as Qingfengzha, a novel, contain Jianghuai Mandarin. People in Yangzhou identified by the dialect they speak, locals spoke the dialect, as opposed to sojourners, who spoke dialects like Huizhou or Wu. This led to the formation of identity based on dialect. Large amounts of merchants from Huizhou lived in Yangzhou and effectively were responsible for keeping the town afloat.
67 million people speak Jianghuai Mandarin. Some features of Jianghua mandarin include retention of Middle Chinese syllable final stops. Like Wu, the glottal stop has superseeded the original Middle Chinese p, t, k, and three way place contrast has also gone extinct.
Some Chinese linguists like Ting have claimed that Jianghuai is mostly Wu containing a superstratum of Mandarin.
The linguist Dan Xu suggested that Jianghuai Mandarin is an intermidiary with Standard Mandarin and Wu dialect regarding the occurrence of postpositions in Chinese dialects.
The Chinese Academy of Social Science was behind the separation of the Hui dialects from the Jianghuai Mandarin dialects in 1987.
Hefei, and other Jianghuai mandarin dialects, along with Taiyuan and other Jin dialects has gone through the process of a glottal stop replacing consonant endings. While most Mandarin dialects and the Wenzhou dialect have completely dropped Middle Chinese stop endings such as p, t, k, Jianghuai Mandarin, Jin, and Wu dialect converted them into a glottal stop. Having a single entering tone with a glottal stop is shared by Jin, Mandarin, and Wu dialects.
Vocalic distinctions are more common in Jianghuai Mandarin than the Jin Chinese.
The linguist Matthew Y. Chen noted that since the CVq syllables which are related to Middle Chinese ton IV are preserved in Jianghuai Mandarin that splitting Jin Chines from Mandarin on the basis that Middle Chinese tone IV was preserved in Jin made no sense. He did note that there was a separate reason to split Jin from Northern Mandarin, since it has a unique tone sandhi.
When Jianghuai Mandarin and Wu were compared to dialects from China's southeastern coast, it was conluded "that chain-type shifts in Chinese follow the same general rules as have been revealed by Labov for American and British English dialects."
Comparison to other Mandarin dialects
Jianghuai Mandarin is related to the other subdialects of Mandarin. Jianghuai Mandarin belongs to the Mandarin supergroup, and is one of the eight Mandarin subgroups. The other seven subgroups of Mandarin are "Northeastern, Beijing, Beifang, Jiaoliao, Zhongyuan, Lanyin, Southwestern" Other linguists classify Jin, Jianghuai, Northeastern, Northern, and Southwestern as five groups of Mandarin. Some linguists use three major groups to classify Mandarin, in total eight subdialects are included in the three major groups, one of which is Jianghuai. Linguists used the stopped tone category's reflexes to classify Mandarin into its various different groups. The most often accepted groups include Jianghuai as one of them, the other being Central Plains and Southwestern Mandarin. Another scheme classifies Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern, and Jiang-huai Mandarin into 4 groups of Mandarin.Jianghuai (eastern) Mandarin and Northern Mandarin do not share a lot of words, frequently a lot of Jianghuai Mandarin words have no Northern Mandarin cognates, besides cognates that do exist between the two Mandarins have multiple forms.
The Rugaohua dialect of Jianghuai does not follow the T3 sandhi rule which most other Mandarin dialects follow, with T3 being absent from it. Linguists speculate that the Beijing dialect also eliminated T3 sandhi, but it was resurrected for modern Standard Mandarin (Putonghua).
Nanjing Jianghuai Mandarin has preserve the glottal stop as a final and separates the entering tone unlike Northern Mandarin
Beijing dialect
Beijing dialect, or Pekingese , is the dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. It is the phonological basis of Standard Chinese, which is used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China , and Singapore....
or Southwestern Mandarin
Southwestern Mandarin
Southwestern Mandarin , also known as Upper Yangtze Mandarin , is a primary branch of Mandarin Chinese spoken by Han Chinese people throughout many regions of central and southwestern China, such as Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou, most parts of Hubei, the western part of Hunan, the northern...
, like Northern Mandarin, it keeps the retroflex initials. In Jianghuai Mandarin, the n sound does not exist, being pronounced as L, the opposite occurred in Southwestern Mandarin, where now only the n sound is present while L merged into it, Northern Mandarin on the other hand, keeps both n and L separate. Jianghuai, like Northern Mandarin, also separates the F and X sound in "xu", while in Southwestern Mandarin, X merged into f so that it is pronounced as "fu". In Jianghuai, əŋ has "merged" into iŋ, while the opposite has occurred in Southwestern Mandarin, Northern Mandarin keeps both as separate sounds.
The two finals ŋ and n are the only ones that exist in dialects of Mandarin. The final stops merged into a glottal stop in Jianghuai Mandarin, while in the majority of southwestern Mandarin they are completely eliminated, Northern and Northwest Mandarin have undergone both changes in their varieties of dialects. Nanjing Mandarin is an exception to the normal occurrence of the i, y and u medials in Mandarin, along with is eastern Shanxi and some southwest Mandarin dialects..
Verbs meaning giving function as a passive agent marker or a disposal construction direct object marker in the Zhongyuan, Jianghuai, and southwestern Mandarin. This is also shared by the grammatization of "gei" 给 in Standard Mandarin, since all four are Mandarin dialects.
When Chinese people were subjected to listening to various dialects such as Northern Mandarin (Yantai dialect), Standard Mandarin (Putonghua), and Jianghuai Mandarin (Rugao dialect of Jiangsu), "cross dialectal" differences appeared in their reactions.
Prominence
Jianghuai Mandarin was possibly the native tone of the founding Emperor of the Ming dynastyMing Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
, Zhu Yuanzhang and many of his military and civil officials.
The "Guanhua koine" of the early Ming era was based on Jianghuai Guanhua (Jianghuai Mandarin). Western missionaries and Korean Hangul
Hangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
writings of the Ming Guanhua and Nanjing dialect showed differences, which pointed to the Guanhua being a koine and mixture of various dialects strongly based on Jianghuai.
In Matteo Ricci
Matteo Ricci
Matteo Ricci, SJ was an Italian Jesuit priest, and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China Mission, as it existed in the 17th-18th centuries. His current title is Servant of God....
's "Dicionário Português-Chinês", words in this dictionary documenteed the Ming dynasty Mandarin. A number of words appeared to be derived from Jianghuai Mandarin dialect, such as "pear, jujube, shirt, ax, hoe, joyful, to speak, to bargain, to know, to urinate, to build a house, busty, and not yet."
Some linguists have studied the influence which Nanjing Jianghuai Mandarin had on Ming dynasty guanhua/Mandarin. Although the early Ming dynasty Mandarin/Guanhua was a koine based on Nanjing dialect, it was not entirely identical to it, with some non Jianghuai characteristics being found in it. Francisco Varo
Francisco Varo
Francisco Varo was a Domincan monk, missionary in China, and author of the first grammar of Mandarin Chinese, "Arte de la lengua mandarina" . His Chinese names were Wan Fangjige 萬方濟 and Wan Jiguo 萬濟國.-Life:...
advised that to learn Chinese one must acquire it from "Not just any Chinese, but only those who have the natural gift of speaking the Mandarin language well, such as those natives of the Province of Nan king, and of other provinces where the Mandarin tongue is spoken well.
Jianghuai Mandarin, along with Northern Mandarin
Beijing dialect
Beijing dialect, or Pekingese , is the dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. It is the phonological basis of Standard Chinese, which is used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China , and Singapore....
, formed the standard for Baihua before and during the Qing dynasty
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
up till its replacement by modern Standard Mandarin
Standard Mandarin
Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
. This Baihua was used by writers all over China regardless of the dialect they spoke. Chinese writers who spoke other dialects had to use the grammar and vocabulary of Jianghuai and Northern Mandarin in order for the majority of Chinese to understand their writing, by contrast, Chinese who did not speak southern dialects would not be able to understand a Southern dialect's writing.
Jianghuai played an imporant role in the formation of the Beijing dialect
Beijing dialect
Beijing dialect, or Pekingese , is the dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. It is the phonological basis of Standard Chinese, which is used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China , and Singapore....
. The Beijing dialect was created from a mixture of the various northern dialects, and influences from Jianghuai.
Dialect has also been used as a tool for regional identitity and politics in the Jiangbei
Jiangbei
Jiangbei may refer to:*North of the Yangtze River, especially in eastern China, or Jiangsu*Jiangbei District, Chongqing, in Chongqing, China*Jiangbei District, Ningbo, in Zhejiang, China*Jiangbei, Meizhou, in Guangdong, China...
and Jiangnan
Jiangnan
Jiangnan or Jiang Nan is a geographic area in China referring to lands immediately to the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, including the southern part of the Yangtze Delta...
regions. While the city of Yangzhou
Yangzhou
Yangzhou is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangsu Province, People's Republic of China. Sitting on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, it borders the provincial capital of Nanjing to the southwest, Huai'an to the north, Yancheng to the northeast, Taizhou to the east, and Zhenjiang across...
was the center of trade, flourishing and prosperous, it was considered part of Jiangnan
Jiangnan
Jiangnan or Jiang Nan is a geographic area in China referring to lands immediately to the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, including the southern part of the Yangtze Delta...
, which was known to be wealthy, even though Yangzhou was north of the Yangzi river. Once Yangzhou's wealth prosperity were gone, it was then considered to be part of Jiangbei, the "backwater". After Yangzhou was removed from Jiangnan, its residents decided to no longer speak Jianghuai Mandarin, which was the dialect of Yangzhou. They instead replaced Mandarin with Wu and spoke Taihu Wu dialects
Taihu Wu dialects
Taihu Wu dialects , or Northern Wu dialects , are a group of Wu dialects spoken over much of southern part of Jiangsu province, including Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, the southern part of Nantong, Jingjiang and Danyang; the municipality of Shanghai; and the northern part of Zhejiang province, including...
. In Jiangnan itself, multiple subdialects of Wu fought for the position of prestige dialect.
History of Expansion
Evidence from the Eastern Han dynasty period suggests the southern dialects included Jianghuai.During the Han dynasty, Old Chinese
Old Chinese
The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....
was divided into dialects, one of them was called "Chǔ-Jiāng-huái", 憐 lián meant "to love" in this dialect.
The original dialect of Nanjing was the Wu dialect in the Eastern Jin. After the Wu Hu uprising
Wu Hu uprising
Wu Hu forces rose up against the Jin Dynasty of China, who they had formerly served, in 304 CE, and by 316 CE their victory was complete. The Jin Dynasty's control was thus limited to territory south of the Huai River.-Background:...
, the Jin Emperor and many northern Chinese fled south. The new capital of Eastern Jin was created at Jiankang
Jiankang
Jiankang was the capital city of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and Southern Dynasties. Its walls are extant ruins in the modern municipal region of Nanjing.-History:...
, where modern day Nanjing is today, it was during this time that the Nanjing dialect started to transform into Jianghuai Mandarin from Wu. Further events, such as Hou Jing's rebellions during the Liang dynasty and the Sui dynasty invasion of the Chen dynasty resulted in Jiankang's destruction, during the Ming dynasty, Ming Taizu relocated southerners from below Yangzi and made Nanjing the capital, and during the Taiping Rebellion
Taiping Rebellion
The Taiping Rebellion was a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, who, having received visions, maintained that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, against the ruling Manchu-led Qing Dynasty...
, Taiping rebels seized Nanjing and made it the capital of the Taiping Kingdom, the fighting resulted in the loss of the population of Nanjing. These events all played in role in forming the Nanjing dialect of today.
In Nanjing, Mandarin became the dominant language after the Taiping Rebellion.
Immigrants from Northern China during the middle of the Song dynasty moved south, bringing a speech type from which Northern Wu and Jianghuai reading patterns both derive from, these northern immigrants almost totally took over from the original inhabitants on the Yangtze's northern bank. Jiang-huai, like other dialects of Chinese has two forms for pronuncing words, the Bai (common, vulgar), and the Wen (literary), the Bai forms appear to preserve more ancient forms of speech dating from before the the mass migration in the Song dynasty which brought in the wen pronunciations.
During the Ming dynasty Wu speakers moved into Jianghuai speaking regions, influencing the Tairu and Tongtai dialects of Jianghuai.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties Jianghuai speakers moved into Hui dialect areas.
Jianghuai Mandarin is currently overtaking Wu dialect as the language of multiple counties in Jiangsu. An example of this is Zaicheng Town in Lishui County
Lishui County
Lishui County is a county of Jiangsu, China. It is under the administration of Nanjing city. It's south of Nanjing and Jiangning and north of Gaochun...
, both Jianghuai and Wu dialect were spoken in several towns in Lishui, with Wu being spoken by the greater amount of people in more towns than Jianghuai. The Wu dialect is called "old Zaicheng Speech", while Jianghuai dialect is called "new Zaicheng speech", with Wu dialect being driven rapidly to extinction. Only old people use it to talk to relatives. The Jianghuai dialect was present there since about a century, even though all the surrounding areas around the town are Wu speaking. Jianghuai was always confined inside the town itself until the 60's, in the present it is overtaking Wu.
Sub-dialects
It is divided into three main branches, with several sub-branches:Hongchao dialects 洪巢片
The largest and most widespread branch of Jianghuai Mandarin, mostly concentrated in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, with smaller minorities in Zhejiang province. It is divided into the Western Huai dialects and the Eastern Huai dialects, with the Western Huai dialects being the more numerous of the two.
- Western Huai dialects 淮西話, also known as Linglu dialects 寧廬方言
- Hefei dialect 合肥話
- Nanjing dialectNanjing dialectNanjing dialect or Nanjing Mandarin is a dialect of Jianghuai Mandarin which is spoken in the city of Nanjing in China.-Family:Nanjing dialect is a dialect of Jianghuai Mandarin, which belongs to the broader Mandarin Chinese family, which is a Sinitic language like all other Chinese...
南京話
- Eastern Huai dialects 淮東話
- Yangzhou dialect 揚州話
- Zhenjiang dialect 鎮江話
Tongtai dialects
Tong-Tai Dialect
Tong-Tai Dialect, also named as Tai-Ru DialectTong-Tai Dialect(Chinese: 通泰方言), also named as Tai-Ru DialectTong-Tai Dialect(Chinese: 通泰方言), also named as Tai-Ru Dialect(Chinese: 泰如方言）is a particular dialect of Jianghuai Mandarin spoken in the middle-east of Jiangsu province. Tong stands for...
通泰片, also known as Tairu dialect 泰如片
Mostly spoken in the area from southern Yancheng
Yancheng
Yancheng is a prefecture-level city in northeastern Jiangsu province, People's Republic of China. The city with the largest jurisdiction area in Jiangsu, Yancheng borders Lianyungang to the north, Huai'an to the west, Yangzhou and Taizhou to the southwest, Nantong to the south, and looks out to...
to northern Nantong
Nantong
Nantong is a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu province, People's Republic of China. Located on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, near the river mouth, Nantong is a vital river port bordering Yancheng to the north, Taizhou to the west, Suzhou and Shanghai to the south across the river, and...
cities in Jiangsu province.
- Nantong dialect 南通話
Huangxiao dialects 黃孝片
Mostly spoken in eastern Hubei province and northern Jiangxi, particularly the area around Jiujiang
Jiujiang
Jiujiang , formerly transliterated Kiukiang, is a prefecture-level city located on the southern shores of the Yangtze River in northwest Jiangxi Province, China. It is the second-largest prefecture-level city in Jiangxi province, the largest one being Nanchang...
.
- Xiaogan dialect 孝感話
Isolates
- Junjiahua 軍家話 - A variety of Jianghuai Mandarin brought to Hainan and the rest of coastal Southeastern China during the Ming dynasty by soldiers from Jiangsu, Anhui and Henan during the reign of Hongwu EmperorHongwu EmperorThe Hongwu Emperor , known variably by his given name Zhu Yuanzhang and by his temple name Taizu of Ming , was the founder and first emperor of the Ming Dynasty of China...
. Mostly spoken in small pockets throughout GuangdongGuangdongGuangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
, GuangxiGuangxiGuangxi, formerly romanized Kwangsi, is a province of southern China along its border with Vietnam. In 1958, it became the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, a region with special privileges created specifically for the Zhuang people.Guangxi's location, in...
, HainanHainanHainan is the smallest province of the People's Republic of China . Although the province comprises some two hundred islands scattered among three archipelagos off the southern coast, of its land mass is Hainan Island , from which the province takes its name...
and FujianFujian' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...
provinces.
The Wuchang, Wuhan, and Tianmen dialects are spoken around the Chang-jiang lakes.
Taixing dialect. Taixing dialect uses the character "na" for "disposal construction".
Anqing dialect.
"Tongdao, Ningyuan, Longshan, Yizhang, Zhijiang" are also all Jianghuai Mandarin dialects.