| Tong-Tai Mandarin | |
|---|---|
| Tai-Ru | |
| Region | easternJiangsu |
| Speakers | 11.95 million (Tai-Ru) (2012)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
Tong–Tai (Chinese:通泰), also known asTai–Ru (Chinese:泰如), is a group ofLower Yangtze Mandarin dialects spoken in the east-central part ofJiangsu province in the prefecture-level cities ofNantong (formerly Tongzhou) andTaizhou. The alternative name refers to the county-level city ofRugao within Nantong. This region includes the areas which are to the north ofYangtze River and to the east ofGrand Canal. There are about 11.37 million speakers there (in 2004) and this region occupies about 15,000 square kilometers.
This region can also be divided further into three districts: the west, the middle and the east.[2] The west part includes Taizhou,Jiangyan, west ofHai'an, west ofDongtai,Dafeng,Xinghua, east ofJiangdu. The middle part includesRugao,Rudong,Taixing, east ofDongtai, east ofHai'an and southwest ofJingjiang. The east part includes downtown ofNantong and southwest ofTongzhou. These vernaculars are distinguished by the difference inconsonants.
However these districts used to be the region of theWu culture, so there are many features ofWu Chinese in these vernaculars, especially the vernacular in the middle part, known asmiddle Tong-Tai dialect. It is closely bounded on the Changzhou part in theWu region.
TheNantong variety will be taken as representative.
| Labial | Alveolar | Alveolo- palatal | Post- alveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| Plosive | aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | |||
| unaspirated | p | t | k | ʔ | |||
| Affricate | aspirated | tsʰ | tɕʰ | ||||
| unaspirated | ts | tɕ | |||||
| Fricative | fv | s | ɕʑ | ʃ | x | ||
| Lateralapproximant | w | l | j | ||||
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r-colored ɜ: ɜ˞
tongue position for [ø] is slightly higher than the standard [ø], but lower than [y]
[ɛ] is slightly lower than the standard [ɛ], sounds close to [æ]
[ʌ] is higher than the standard [ʌ], close to [ɜ]
Tones
Dark level 阴平21 Light level 阳平35
(Light)Rising 上声（阳上）55
Light departing 阳去213 Dark departing 阴去42
Light entering 阳入55ʔ Dark entering 阴入42ʔ
The Rugaohua dialect of Jianghuai does not follow the T3 sandhi rule which most other Mandarin dialects follow. Linguists speculate that changes to pitch countours over time also removed the original motivation for T3 sandhi in the Beijing dialect underlying modernStandard Mandarin (putonghua), but the sandhi was retained.[4]
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.[5]
But it is not the case that all current Mandarin dialects preserve this sandhi rule. For example, it is no longer in my dialect, Rugaohua, a Jianghuai Mandarin dialect.page 26.
Cross-dialectal as well as age differences were observed among Chinese listeners in Experiments BJ, RG and YT using natural speech stimuli from Putonghua, Rugao (a Jianghuai Mandarin dialect, Jiangsu Province) and Yantai (a Northern Mandarin dialect, Shandong Province), respectively.
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