| Beijing dialect | |
|---|---|
| Pekingese, Beijingese | |
| 北京话 Běijīnghuà | |
| Native to | China |
| Region | Beijing urban districts[1] |
Sino-Tibetan
| |
Standard forms | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| ISO 639-6 | bjjg |
cmn-bej | |
| Glottolog | beij1234 |
| Linguasphere | 79-AAA-bb |
| IETF | cmn-u-sd-cnbj |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
TheBeijing dialect (simplified Chinese:北京话;traditional Chinese:北京話;pinyin:Běijīnghuà), also known asPekingese andBeijingese, is theprestige dialect ofMandarin spoken in theurban area ofBeijing,China. It is the phonological basis ofStandard Chinese, the official language in thePeople's Republic of China and one of the official languages ofSingapore and theRepublic of China. Despite the similarity to Standard Chinese, it is characterized by some "iconic" differences, including theaddition of a final rhotic儿;-r to some words (e.g.哪儿;nǎr).[citation needed] During theMing, southern dialectal influences were also introduced into the dialect.[2]
As the political and cultural capital ofChina, Beijing has held much historical significance as a city, and its speech has held sway as a lingua franca. Being officially selected to form the basis of the phonology ofStandard Mandarin has further contributed to its status as aprestige dialect, or sometimesthe prestige dialect of Chinese.[3][4]
Other scholars have referred to it as the "elite Beijing accent."[5]
Until at least the late 18th century, the standard language of the Chinese elite had been theNanjing dialect, despite political power having already been located in Beijing.[5] Through the nineteenth century, evidence from Western dictionaries suggests that a shift occurred in the court from a Nanjing-based standard to a more local Beijing-based one.[6]
During theQing dynasty it was used alongside theManchu language as the official court language.[7]
The establishment of phonology of Standard Chinese dates from a 1913 decision by theCommission on the Unification of Pronunciation, which took the Beijing dialect as its base but retained a lot of phonology from other varieties ofMandarin, resulting in theOld National Pronunciation. This was overturned in 1926, resulting in the "pronunciation of the educated natives of Beijing" officially adopted as the basis for the phonology of Standard Chinese (Guoyu) in 1926.[7][8]
In 1955, thePeople's Republic of China declared that Standard Chinese was to be "modeled on the pronunciation of Beijing, draws on Northern Chinese as its base dialect, and receives its syntactic norms from exemplary works of vernacular literature".[7][9]
The Beijing dialect has been described as carrying a lot of "cultural heft."[2] According to Zhang Shifang, professor atBeijing Language and Culture University,
"As China's ancient and modern capital, Beijing and thus its linguistic culture as well are representative of our entire nation's civilization... For Beijing people themselves, the Beijing dialect is an important symbol of identity."[2]
Some argue thatCantonese is the "only dialect which has attained a level of prestige that rivals that of the standard national language."[10]
The dialect has been described as "the official language of the entertainment industry", making it also the "showbiz accent."[11]
Even within Beijing the dialect varies. Those north of theForbidden City spoke with a more "refined" accent than the poorer people, craftsmen, and performers of the south.[2]
Some fear that the vernacular Beijing dialect will disappear.[2] According to a 2010 study byBeijing Union University, 49% of young Beijingers born after 1980 prefer to speak standard Mandarin rather than the Beijing dialect.[12] According to a UN report, nearly 100 Chinese dialects, especially those spoken by the55 ethnic minorities in China, are endangered.[13]
The Beijing dialect is generally mutually intelligible with other Mandarin dialects, including Standard Chinese. However it is not intelligible with otherSino-Tibetan languages or even other Chinese languages includingCantonese,Hokkien, andWu Chinese.[citation needed]
TheDungan language is a Sinitic language derived from Mandarin spoken throughoutCentral Asia, particularly inKyrgyzstan andKazakhstan. Speakers like Dungan poet and scholarIasyr Shivaza and others have reported that Chinese who speak the Beijing dialect could understand Dungan, but Dungans could not understand Beijing Mandarin.[14]
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In fundamental structure, thephonology of the Beijing dialect and Standard Chinese are almost identical. In part, this is because the pronunciation of Standard Chinese was based on Beijing pronunciation.[citation needed] However, the Beijing dialect also has vernacular readings of characters which are not only different, but have initial and final combinations that are not present in Standard Chinese, such as嗲;diǎ,塞;sēi,甭;béng,忒;tēi,[15] and色;shǎi.
Other differences exist, including the proliferation ofrhotic vowels. All rhotic vowels are the result of the use of the儿;-r/-ɚ/, anounsuffix, except for a few words pronounced[ɐɚ̯] that do not have this suffix. In Standard Chinese, these also occur but much less often than they appear in the Beijing dialect. This phenomenon is known as儿化;érhuà, orrhotacization, as is considered one of the iconic characteristics of Beijing Mandarin.[2]
When /w/ occurs in syllable-initial position, many speakers use[ʋ] before vowels other than [o] as in我wǒ, and [u] as in五;wǔ, e.g.尾巴wěiba[ʋei̯˨pa˦].[16][15]
When/ŋ/ occurs before a glide or vowel it is often eliminated along with any following glides so中央;zhōngyāng is pronouncedzhuāng and公安局;gōng'ānjú asguānjú.[17]
Sibilant initials differ significantly between Standard Chinese and the Beijing dialect. The initials⟨zcs⟩/tstsʰs/ are pronounced as[tθtθʰθ] in Beijing.⟨j q x⟩/tɕtɕʰɕ/ are pronounced as/tstsʰs/ by some female speakers, a feature known as女国音;nǚguóyīn; 'female Standard Chinese'.[15]
Moreover, the Beijing dialect has a few phonetic reductions that are usually considered too "colloquial" for use in Standard Chinese. These are often dependent on which syllables are stressed and unstressed. For example, in fast speech, initial consonants go throughlenition if they are in anunstressed syllable: pinyin] ⟨zhchsh⟩/tʂtʂʰʂ/ before ⟨eiu⟩ become ⟨r⟩/ɻ/, so不知道;bùzhīdào; 'don't know' can sound likebùrdào;老师;lǎoshī can sound likelǎor, resulting in a "swallowing of consonants",[2] or吞音;tūnyīn.
⟨jqx⟩/tɕtɕʰɕ/ become ⟨y⟩/j/, so赶紧去;gǎnjǐnqù; 'go quickly' can sound likegǎnyǐnqù; pinyin ⟨bdg⟩/ptk/ go throughvoicing to become[bdɡ]; intervocalic ⟨ptk⟩/pʰtʰkʰ/ also lose aspiration and can be voiced, sounding identical to ⟨bdg⟩;[15] similar changes also occur on other consonants.[citation needed]
⟨f⟩ is voiced and relaxed in intervocalic positions, resulting in[ʋ].[citation needed]
Affricates are elided into fricatives when not word initial, such as茅厕;máocè becomingmáosi.[15]
Some of these changes yield syllables that violate the syllable structure of Standard Chinese, such as大柵欄;Dà Zhàlán Street, which locals pronounce asDàshlàr.[18][19][20]
The literarytones of the Beijing dialect tend to be more exaggerated than Standard Chinese. In Standard Chinese, the four tones are high flat, high rising, low dipping, and falling; in the Beijing dialect, the first two tones are higher, the third one dips more prominently, and the fourth one falls more.[citation needed] However, toneless syllables are incredibly common in the vernacular Beijing dialect and the third tone is realized as a low tone instead of a dipping tone, known as a "half third tone".[citation needed]
Many of the Manchu words are now pronounced with some Chinese peculiarities of pronunciation, so k before i and e=ch', g before i and e=ch, h and s before i=hs, etc. H before a, o, u, ū, is the guttural Scotch or German ch.
The Chinese Northern Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing had a major impact on the phonology of thedialect of Manchu spoken in Beijing, and since Manchu phonology was transcribed into Chinese and European sources based on the sinified pronunciation of Manchus from Beijing, the original authentic Manchu pronunciation is unknown to scholars.[22][23]
The Manchus that lived in Beijing were influenced by the Beijing dialect insofar as pronouncing Manchu sounds was hard for them, and they pronounced Manchu according to Chinese phonetics. In contrast, the Manchus ofAigun,Heilongjiang could both pronounce Manchu sounds properly and mimic the sinified pronunciation of Manchus in Beijing. This was because they learned the Beijing pronunciation from either studying in Beijing or from officials sent to Aigun from Beijing. They could also tell them apart, using the Chinese influenced pronunciation of Beijing to demonstrate that they were better educated and had "superior stature" in society.[24]
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A substantial proportion of the loanwords inMongolian are derived from Chinese, with the oldest layer of loanwords in Written Mongolian being Chinese in origin.[25] Much of Mongolian spoken inInner Mongolia has been affected by Mandarin; lexical influence is claimed to be strong inKhorchin Mongolian, whilst there have been claims of phonetic influence from Mandarin Chinese in theKharchin variety of Mongolian.[26] The aspirated bilabial stop /pʰ/ and the labial approximant /w/ are phonemes only found in loanwords from Chinese andTibetan, evident in their limited distribution in Mongolian.[27] Substantialdiglossia can also be observed in Inner Mongolia.[28]
The Beijing dialect typically uses many words that are considered slang, and therefore occur much less or not at all in Standard Chinese. Speakers not native to Beijing may have trouble understanding many or most of these. Many of such slang words employ the rhoticsuffix "-r", which is known aserhua. Examples include:
Some Beijing phrases may be somewhat disseminated outside Beijing:
Note that some of the slang are considered to be土话;tuhua; 'base', 'uneducated language', that are carry-overs from an older generation and are no longer used amongst more educated speakers, for example:
Others may be viewed asneologisms used among younger speakers and in "trendier" circles:
The dialect also contains both Manchu and Mongol loanwords:[2]
There are syntactic differences between Standard Mandarin and the Beijing dialect.[32] Both southern Chinese and southern Mandarin syntactic features were incorporated into Standard Mandarin, while the Beijing dialect retains features of northern Mandarin.[33] The Beijing dialect also uses colloquial expressions differently.
There is a conditional loss of theclassifier under certain circumstances after the numeral一; 'one', usually pronounced asyí with the second tone, as if undergoingtone sandhi with the classifier个;gè after it.[29][33]
In general, Standard Chinese is influenced byClassical Chinese, which makes it more condense and concise. The Beijing dialect can therefore seem more longwinded; but this is sometime balanced by the generally faster speaking rate and phonetic reductions of colloquial Beijing speech.[citation needed]
 | This article needs to beupdated. The reason given is: More examples and better examples are needed. Please help update this to reflect recent events or newly available information.(June 2019) |
今天
Jīntiān
会
huì
下雨，
xiàyǔ,
所以
suǒyǐ
出门
chūmén
的
de
时候
shíhou
要
yào
记得
jìde
带
dài
雨伞。
yǔsan.
今天会下雨，所以出门的时候要记得带雨伞。
Jīntiānhuìxiàyǔ,suǒyǐchūméndeshíhouyàojìdedàiyǔsan.
It is going to rain today, so remember to bring an umbrella when you go out.
今儿
Jīnr
Jīar
得
děi
děi
下雨，
xiàyǔ,
xiàyǔ,
（所以）
(suǒyǐ)
(suǒyǐ)
出门儿
chūménr
chūmér
时候
shíhòu
ríhòu
记着
jìzhe
jìr
带
dài
dài
伞！
sǎn!
sǎn!
(with phonetic reductions)
今儿得下雨，（所以）出门儿时候记着带伞！
Jīnrděixiàyǔ, (suǒyǐ)chūménrshíhòujìzhedàisǎn!
Jīarděixiàyǔ, (suǒyǐ)chūmérríhòujìrdàisǎn!
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)Sino-Tibetan branches | |||||
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| WesternHimalayas (Himachal, Uttarakhand,Nepal,Sikkim) |
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| Myanmar and Indo- Burmese border |
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| East andSoutheast Asia |
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| Dubious (possible isolates,Arunachal) |
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