Dialectal tone swapping*
A month or so ago I happened to be in the Zhengzhou (Henan) area at the same time as a couple of my foreigner friends from Shanghai, though our paths never crossed. Upon returning to Shanghai, we talked about what it was like to deal with the locals and we all agreed on a couple points.
First, it was mindblowingly awesome to understand every conversation being had while walking down the street. Since the three of us have all spent the majority of our time in Wu speaking cities since coming to China, it was the first time any of us had experienced that.
Second, tones were by far the biggest problem in communication (unless of course the speaker was a mumbler). In the dialects of the area, tones don’t always match up with the MSM** equivalents. More on that in a minute.
There’s this debate that pops up from time to time with Mandarin learners, and at least in my experience with Arabic learners too and so probably with every language that has any sort of diversity in dialects. It is this: Where is the best place to learn Mandarin (or Arabic or German…)? Many people will say go to Beijing, because of some lie** that Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect. Others (like me) think the location doesn’t really matter much.
But back to tones for a moment. This topic came up again this week after the three of us ended up catching the same lecture. One of the points of confusion I had had during the lecture, and the thing that kept my hands on Pleco throughout the lecture, is that I was hearing a number of tones that didn’t match what I had expected for the word I thought was being said. Initially my assumption was just that my tones were wrong, but then in each case the dictionaries (Pleco and Qingwen which uses CC-CEDICT) agreed with me, not with the speaker. Then I realised: the lecturer wasn’t a Wu speaker.
So add a couple points to Shanghai in the debate of where best to learn Mandarin. I only realised this recently, but I’ve never once heard a Shanghairen (or Changzhouren or Wuxiren) with crap Mandarin tones. And I think I know why. There is no Mandarin dialect that’s being spoken at home. It’s Wu. So when they do speak Mandarin, they’re all effectively speaking it as a second language. It’s all textbook tones from day one. In Dengfeng or Luoyang, that’s not the case. That’s where tone-swapping occurs. First might be traded with fourth or maybe fourth is moved into the position of first and then the other three are pushed back one or who knows. Or maybe first and second are simply indistinguishable.
Anyone who’s spent time in Shanghai can attest to the importance of tones. It comes up any time either 十 or 四 is used. In a way it’s kinda like when you learn Mandarin in Xinjiang, except you never need to learn how to pronounce /ʂ/.
For what it’s worth, the Levant might not be the best place to learn Arabic, but it’s the most badass.
* I know they’re not actually moved around or swapped. Let it go.
** Modern Standard Mandarin. I think this is a Mairism, or maybe I just projected MSA from Modern Standard Arabic. Either way, I like it so I’m using it.
*** because if Beijing Sounds has taught me anything, it’s that Beijingers aren’t really speaking Mandarin any more standard-ly than Shanghairen.
“Many people will say go to Beijing, because of some lie** that Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect. Others (like me) think the location doesn’t really matter much.”
Do you honestly believe this? I’m not implying that Beijing is the best place to learn mandarin, but saying that location dosent matter is quite a bold statement. Go to guangxi, yunnan or basically any place in the south and tell me location dosent matter. Also Wu speaking people definitely dont learning the tones perfectly, it only seems they have mastered them compared to the people in zhengzhou because zhengzhouren sometimes mix their dialect(quite close to mandarin) into speech, which does result in incorrect tones.
“So when they do speak Mandarin, they’re all effectively speaking it as a second language. It’s all textbook tones from day one.”
I know a Pumi (普米) lass here in Lijiang, and she speaks mandarin with the classic “foreigner accent” that most Han people put on when pretending to be a foreign person; the first time I heard her speak mandarin I assumed she was telling an overly-elaborate, unfunny joke involving a foreigner, but it turned out she just doesn’t do tones. Must be something to do with the fact that for the first 20 odd years of her life she simply didn’t have the need to speak mandarin.
@Rick, so if I can paraphrase you’re saying people whose native sinitic language is further from Mandarin might, counterintuitively, speak something closer to MSM because they have to learn it all from scratch. Whereas folks whose native sinitic is something closer to MSM might not bother to standardize and thus be harder to understand.
This seems plausible to me. Maybe just because I was recently on a trip around Xi’an where I had a devil of a time understanding much of the rural speech even though it’s certainly a form of Mandarin.
@Rick: Also Wu speaking people definitely dont learning the tones perfectly, it only seems they have mastered them compared to the people in zhengzhou because zhengzhouren sometimes mix their dialect(quite close to mandarin) into speech, which does result in incorrect tones.
This is exactly my point.
@Syz: ditto.
And yes I do really believe location doesn’t matter as long as you have people with whom to speak. No one is learning my speaking to cabbies alone. You will most certainly learn a lot from written sources. So while I might say sisikui for 14 kuai and 40 kuai while chilling with locals, I will only once in a hundred times, maybe much rarer even, say such a thing to a Northerner.
In Dutch we call the standard ABC, short for “Algemeen Beschaafd Chinees” (General Civilised Chinese). It’s a pun on the standard for Dutch, A(B)N “Algemeen (General) (Beschaafd (Civilised)) Nederlands (Dutch)” 😀
That’s funny. Here in China ABC means “American Born Chinese”, someone of Chinese descent who is otherwise a natural citizen of the United States. I especially like that it’s “civilised”, meaning all those who don’t speak it properly are 不文明 lacking civility.