Beihai dialect
| Beihai dialect | |
|---|---|
| 北海話 (Chinese) | |
| Pronunciation | [pɐk̚˥ hɔːi˨˦ waː˨˩] |
| Native to | China |
| Region | Beihai |
Native speakers | No specific statistics, but covering the economic center of the city. |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | yue |
| ISO 639-6 | bei |
Beihai dialect is a variety of Cantonese and the second most-spoken language in Beihai, Guangxi. This language is named Beihai Cantonese (Chinese: 北海粵語) linguistically, Plain Speech (Chinese: 白話) colloquially.
Beihai dialect experienced a strong influence from the Limchownese language, which is the dominant language in Beihai. It also shares some common elements with the accents of Western Guangdong.
History
The most-spoken and originally existing language in Beihai is Limchownese before Cantonese and Tanka immigrants brought their languages and culture while settling in Beihai Town, Hepu county in the 19th century because of the Chefoo Convention, which made Beihai a status of Treaty port. It was the time when the economic center was shifted from North (nowadays Hepu county) to South (nowadays downtown Beihai). At the time, languages in South Hepu also started to transform to Cantonese from Limchownese, which still dominated. In the middle of the 20th century, the Ministry of Education published a dictionary of Beihai dialect pronunciation which regulated usage of the Beihai dialect in education and made a great effort to promote it to be mainstream.
Linguistics
The term Limchownese-Cantonese is the most appropriate to explain this language. Beihai dialect has experienced strong influence from the Limchownese language, especially conventional vocabularies and phrases; some are originated from Kra–Dai languages without Chinese characters to write (some share the origin with Zhuang and are able to be written by Swandip, which is obviously inefficient and unpopular, sometimes meaningless homonyms are used for writing), others are diverse or very rare old Sinitic words. Its pronunciations are also influenced; some Chinese characters each have two different pronunciations: Limchownese-Cantonese pronunciation in some specific phrases and native Cantonese dialect pronunciation, depending on their different vocabulary which means combining more than two characters (or words from Kra–Dai languages) to form a phrase. And some expressions have two different phrases, native Cantonese dialect phrase and Limchownese phrase.
Here are some samples for the characters with two pronunciations in Beihai dialect:
| Chinese characters |
Beihai dialect | Limchownese Language | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Limchownese-Cantonese pronunciation | native Cantonese pronunciation |
Southern accent | ||
| ipa | specific phrases with L-C pronunciation |
ipa | ipa | |
| 識 | ʃɐt̚5 | 識破 (see through) | ʃɪk̚5 | ʃɐt̚3 |
| 嗇 | ʃɐt̚5 | ？嗇 (stingy) | ʃɪk̚5 | ʃɐt̚3 |
| 鄰 | lɐn21 | 鄰舍 (neighbor) | lɪŋ21 | lɐn33 |
| 傍 | pʊo̯ŋ21 | 暗傍傍 (darkness) | pʰɔŋ21 | poŋ21 |
| 乸 | na33 | 㑚乸 (your mother) | na24 | na33 |
And some expressions are able to be expressed by two different expressions in Beihai dialect (question marks mean that those vocabularies originate from Kra–Dai languages instead of Sinitic languages, so there are not Chinese characters to represent):
| vocabulary | Beihai dialect | |
|---|---|---|
| English | Limchownese phrases | native Cantonese phrases |
| (grand) mother | 乸 | 母 |
| (grand) father | 竇 | 㸙 |
| darkness | 暗傍傍 | 黑孖孖 |
| to give | ? | 畀 |
| home | 屋頭 | 屋幾 |
| kids | ？？？ | 細佬哥 |
| to play | ？ | 嫽 |
| and | 捞 | 同 |
| quick | 快當 | 快脆 |
| to call | 吆 | 喊 |
| small | 尕 | 細 |
References
This article "Beihai dialect" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Beihai dialect. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
