| Longdu dialect | |
|---|---|
| 隆都話 | |
| Native to | China |
| Region | Dachong andShaxi,Guangdong,Hawaii, US-CanadaChinatowns |
Sino-Tibetan
| |
Early forms | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | long1252 |
 Location of Zhongshan 中山 within Guangdong 广东 Province, China | |
TheLongdu dialect is a variety of theEastern Min branch ofChinese originating from the towns ofDachong andShaxi inZhongshan in thePearl River Delta ofGuangdong.[4] The two regions Shaxi and Dachong are together informally known as the Longdu region to locals and those overseas. There are more than 40 villages in the region and they are held together by their shared dialect, which may be classified as endangered due to its deterioration in status and rapidly decreasing popularity even within the Longdu region. Despite its proximity, the Longdu dialect is not very closely related to the surrounding dialects in the region, which belong to theYue group. As such, Longdu forms a "dialect island" of Min speakers. It is one of three enclaves ofMin in Zhongshan, the others beingSanxiang andNanlang.[5]
According to Søren Egerod, who published an extensive study of the dialect based on fieldwork conducted in 1949, the vocabulary consists of three layers:
The Longdu dialect is the mother tongue of many overseas Chinese. Its native speakers generally understandCantonese, but not vice versa. According to the Language Documentation Training Center at theUniversity of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa: "A lot of children do not speak the language in their daily lives. The population of speakers is diminishing."[7] This is generally ascribed to the emigration of speakers from the Longdu region to other countries, and due to the lack of inter-generational transmission. OnlyMandarin is taught to children at school, due to its status as the official national language. In contrast, in the home, parents and grandparents teach the children only Cantonese,[8] given that the Longdu region is within Zhongshan, Guangdong, and that Cantonese is generally viewed as thelingua franca of Guangdong.