Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate , the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum").
92-626: Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive and the movements of the dorsum are not very precise, velars easily undergo assimilation , shifting their articulation back or to the front depending on the quality of adjacent vowels. They often become automatically fronted , that is partly or completely palatal before a following front vowel, and retracted , that is partly or completely uvular before back vowels. Palatalised velars (like English /k/ in keen or cube ) are sometimes referred to as palatovelars . Many languages also have labialized velars, such as [kʷ] , in which
184-410: A in the following syllable ( Germanic a-mutation ) although that had already happened significantly earlier: Another example of a regular change is the sibilant assimilation of Sanskrit in which if there were two different sibilants as the onset of successive syllables, a plain /s/ was always replaced by the palatal /ɕ/ : Lag assimilation to an adjacent segment is tolerably common and often has
276-403: A [k] and a [ɡ] phonetically. However, the [k] does not behave as other consonants, and the argument has been made that it is phonemically /hi/ , leaving Pirahã with only /ɡ/ as an underlyingly velar consonant. Hawaiian does not distinguish [k] from [t] ; ⟨k⟩ tends toward [k] at the beginning of utterances, [t] before [i] , and is variable elsewhere, especially in
368-537: A koiné language based on various northern varieties. When Jesuit missionaries learned this standard language in the 16th century, they called it "Mandarin", from its Chinese name Guānhuà ( 官话 ; 官話 ; 'language of the officials'). In everyday English, "Mandarin" refers to Standard Chinese , which is often called simply "Chinese". Standard Mandarin Chinese is based on Beijing dialect , with some lexical and syntactic influence from other Mandarin dialects. It
460-548: A change results in a single segment with some of the features of both components, it is known as coalescence or fusion. Assimilation occurs in two different types: complete assimilation, in which the sound affected by assimilation becomes exactly the same as the sound causing assimilation, and partial assimilation, in which the sound becomes the same in one or more features but remains different in other features. Tonal languages may exhibit tone assimilation (in effect tonal umlaut), but sign languages also exhibit assimilation when
552-667: A coda [ŋ] that has been analyzed as the realization of nasal vowels . In Pirahã , men may lack the only velar consonant. Other languages lack simple velars. An areal feature of the indigenous languages of the Americas of the coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest is that historical *k was palatalized. When such sounds remained stops, they were transcribed ⟨ kʸ ⟩ in Americanist phonetic notation , presumably corresponding to IPA ⟨ c ⟩, but in others, such as
644-533: A combination of any of these is also common. In Malaysia , Mandarin has been adopted by local Chinese-language schools as the medium of instruction with the standard based on that of Singapore. However, it is not as widespread in daily life among the Malaysian Chinese community, as Hokkien speakers continue to form a plurality among the ethnic Chinese population and Cantonese serves as the common language (especially in commerce and local media). An exception
736-549: A common form of speech developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital, a language referred to as Old Mandarin. New genres of vernacular literature were based on this language, including verse, drama and story forms, such as the qu and sanqu poetry. The rhyming conventions of the new verse were codified in a rime dictionary called the Zhongyuan Yinyun (1324). A radical departure from
828-435: A different test, Read also found that many of the children believed that words like train and chicken both started with /tʃ/ . Anticipatory assimilation at a distance is rare and usually merely an accident in the history of a specific word. However, the diverse and common assimilations known as umlaut in which the phonetics of a vowel are influenced by the phonetics of a vowel in a following syllable, are common and in
920-463: A distance is rare and usually sporadic (except when part of a broader change, as for the Sanskrit śaśa - example, above): Greek leirion > Lat. līlium "lily". In vowel harmony , a vowel's phonetic features are often influenced by those of a preceding vowel. For example, most Finnish case markers come in two forms, with /ɑ/ (written a ) and /æ/ (written ä ), depending on whether
1012-523: A final glottal stop . Many Mandarin varieties, including the Beijing dialect, retain retroflex initial consonants, which have been lost in southern varieties of Chinese. The Chinese capital has been within the Mandarin-speaking area for most of the last millennium, making these dialects very influential. Some form of Mandarin has served as a lingua franca for government officials and the courts since
SECTION 10
#17328687658821104-536: A following sound, but they may also assimilate to a preceding one. Assimilation most commonly occurs between immediately adjacent-sounds but may occur between sounds that are separated by others. Assimilation can be synchronic , an active process in a language at a given point in time, or diachronic , a historical sound change . A related process is coarticulation in which one segment influences another to produce an allophonic variation, such as vowels becoming nasalized before nasal consonants ( /n, m, ŋ/ ) when
1196-482: A frequent assimilation of /kt/ and /bt/ was rather reinterpreted as reflecting /tt/. The structural sequence /kt/ is now all but absent in Italian, since all items in popular speech underwent the same restructuring, /kt/ > /tt/. On the rare occasion that Italian /kt/ is encountered, however, the same assimilation that triggered the restructuring can occur at the phonetic level. For example, the medical term ictus 'stroke',
1288-571: A large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. This is generally attributed to the greater ease of travel and communication in the North China Plain compared to the more mountainous south, combined with the relatively recent spread of Mandarin to frontier areas. Most Mandarin varieties have four tones . The final stops of Middle Chinese have disappeared in most of these varieties, but some have merged them as
1380-452: A lower pitch and by the late Tang dynasty , each of the tones had split into two registers conditioned by the initials. When voicing was lost in all languages except the Wu subfamily, this distinction became phonemic and the system of initials and tones was rearranged differently in each of the major groups. The Zhongyuan Yinyun shows the typical Mandarin four-tone system resulting from a split of
1472-428: A nonadjacent one. Those radical asymmetries might contain hints about the mechanisms involved, but they are not obvious. If a sound changes with reference to a following segment, it is traditionally called "regressive assimilation". Changes with reference to a preceding segment are traditionally called "progressive". Many find those terms confusing, as they seem to mean the opposite of the intended meaning. Accordingly,
1564-475: A post-alveolar affricate instead, resulting in the all-postalveolar consonant clusters [tʃɹ] and [dʒɹ] . This phenomenon also occurs in /str/ , resulting in the all-postalveolar consonant cluster [ʃtʃɹ] . The affrication of /tr, dr/ has been seen in American English, British English, Australian English, and New Zealand English. It is suspected that this change has occurred due to assimilation. One of
1656-408: A relatively recent direct borrowing from Latin, is usually pronounced [ˈiktus] in deliberate speech, but [ˈittus] is frequent in more casual registers. There has been a notable change recognized across a variety of English dialects regarding the pronunciation of the /tr/ and /dr/ consonant clusters . Starting around the mid-20th century, the alveolar stop in /tr, dr/ has slowly been replaced by
1748-606: A separate top-level group, but this remains controversial. The Language Atlas of China calls the remainder of Mandarin a "supergroup", divided into eight dialect groups distinguished by their treatment of the Middle Chinese entering tone (see Tones below): The Atlas also includes several unclassified Mandarin dialects spoken in scattered pockets across southeastern China, such as Nanping in Fujian and Dongfang on Hainan . Another Mandarin variety of uncertain classification
1840-473: A variety of alternative terms have arisen, not all of which avoid the problem of the traditional terms. Regressive assimilation is also known as right-to-left, leading, or anticipatory assimilation. Progressive assimilation is also known as left-to-right, perseveratory, preservative, lagging, or lag assimilation. The terms anticipatory and lag are used here. Occasionally, two sounds (invariably adjacent) may influence each other in reciprocal assimilation. When such
1932-489: A voiceless obstruent: This does not apply across word boundaries, so that the placename Grodzisk Wielkopolski is pronounced [ˈɡrɔdʑizɡ vjɛlkɔˈpɔlskʲi] , not [ˈɡrɔdʑisk fjɛlkɔˈpɔlskʲi] . In that context, /v/ patterns with other voiced obstruents. Because of a similar process, Proto-Indo-Iranian * ćw became sp in Avestan : Old Avestan aspa 'horse' corresponds to Sanskrit aśva Lag assimilation at
SECTION 20
#17328687658822024-703: Is a group of Chinese language dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China and Taiwan. The group includes the Beijing dialect , the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese , the official language of China and Taiwan. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 北方话 ; traditional Chinese : 北方話 ; pinyin : Běifānghuà ; lit. 'northern speech'). Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of
2116-499: Is a palato-alveolar sound; its palatal feature is derived from /j/ while its alveolar is from /t/. Another English example is ‘would you’ -> /wʊd ju/ -> [wʊdʒu]. There are examples in other languages, such as Chumburung where /ɪ̀wú ɪ̀sá/ -> /ɪ̀wúɪ̀sá/ becomes [ɪ̀wɪ́sá] - ‘three horns’. In this case, /ɪ/ is retained in the coalescence and the rising tone on /u/ appears on the coalesced sound. There are two major types of coalescence: reductive and unreductive. Reductive coalescence
2208-445: Is a sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants or vowels ) change to become more similar to other nearby sounds. A common type of phonological process across languages, assimilation can occur either within a word or between words. It occurs in normal speech but becomes more common in more rapid speech . In some cases, assimilation causes the sound spoken to differ from the normal pronunciation in isolation, such as
2300-513: Is apparently Gyami , recorded in the 19th century in the Tibetan foothills, who the Chinese apparently did not recognize as Chinese. Some northwestern Mandarin varieties in the Qinghai–Gansu sprachbund have undergone drastic changes in phonology, lexicon and grammar. A syllable consists maximally of an initial consonant, a medial glide , a vowel, a coda, and tone . In the traditional analysis,
2392-557: Is in the state of Johor , where Mandarin is increasingly used alongside Cantonese as a lingua franca in part due to Singaporean influence. As in Singapore, the local colloquial variant of Mandarin exhibits influences from Cantonese and Malay. In northern Myanmar , a Southwestern Mandarin variant close to the Yunnanese dialect is spoken by local Chinese and other ethnic groups. In some rebel group -controlled regions, Mandarin also serves as
2484-815: Is lost after apical initials in several areas. Thus Southwestern Mandarin has /tei/ "correct" where the standard language has dui /twei/ . Southwestern Mandarin also has /kai kʰai xai/ in some words where the standard has jie qie xie /tɕjɛ tɕʰjɛ ɕjɛ/ . This is a stereotypical feature of southwestern Mandarin, since it is so easily noticeable. E.g. hai "shoe" for standard xie , gai "street" for standard jie . Mandarin dialects typically have relatively few vowels. Syllabic fricatives , as in standard zi and zhi , are common in Mandarin dialects, though they also occur elsewhere. The Middle Chinese off-glides /j/ and /w/ are generally preserved in Mandarin dialects, yielding several diphthongs and triphthongs in contrast to
2576-480: Is not possible according to the International Phonetics Association : see the shaded boxes on the table of pulmonic consonants . In the velar position, the tongue has an extremely restricted ability to carry out the type of motion associated with trills or taps, and the body of the tongue has no freedom to move quickly enough to produce a velar trill or flap. The velar consonants identified by
2668-436: Is often pronounced / ˈ h æ m b æ ɡ / in rapid speech because the [ m ] and [ b ] sounds are both bilabial consonants , and their places of articulation are similar. However, the sequence [ d ] - [ b ] has different places but similar manner of articulation ( voiced stop ) and is sometimes elided , which sometimes causes the canonical [n] phoneme to assimilate to [m] before
2760-450: Is one of the official languages of Taiwan . The Taiwanese standard of Mandarin differs very little from that of mainland China, with differences largely in some technical vocabulary developed from the 1950s onwards. While the spoken standard of Taiwanese Mandarin is nearly identical to that of mainland China, the colloquial form has been heavily influenced by other local languages, especially Taiwanese Hokkien . Notable differences include:
2852-466: Is pronounced [hæŋkɚtʃif] , handbag in rapid speech is pronounced [hæmbæɡ] ). In Italian , voiceless stops assimilated historically to a following /t/ : Italian otto , letto and sotto are examples of historical restructuring: otto and letto no longer contain /kt/ pronounced [tt], and sotto is no longer the structure /bt/ subject to the partial assimilation of devoicing of /b/ and full assimilation to produce [tt]. Over time, phonetic [tt] as
Velar consonant - Misplaced Pages Continue
2944-588: Is reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European . Apart from the voiceless plosive [k] , no other velar consonant is particularly common, even the [w] and [ŋ] that occur in English. There can be no phoneme /ɡ/ in a language that lacks voiced stops, like Mandarin Chinese , but it is sporadically missing elsewhere. Of the languages surveyed in the World Atlas of Language Structures , about 10% of languages that otherwise have /p b t d k/ are missing /ɡ/ . Pirahã has both
3036-580: Is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan (Republic of China, ROC), as well as one of the four official languages of Singapore , and a high-prestige minority language in Malaysia . It also functions as the language of instruction in mainland China and Taiwan. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations , under the name "Chinese". Chinese speakers refer to
3128-510: Is the type of coalescence where sound segments are reduced after fusion is made. For example, in Xhosa, /i - lˈalaini/ becomes /e - lˈoleni/ (side). The /a-i/ segment in the first form reduces to /e/. On the other hand non-reductive coalescence have no reduction in sound segments even though there is evidence of fusion. For example, in Shona, [v_á] [tengesa] (they sell) becomes [ku] [téngésá] (to sell). Here,
3220-538: Is used by linguists to refer to the northern dialects recorded in materials from the Yuan dynasty. Native speakers who are not academic linguists may not recognize that the variants they speak are classified in linguistics as members of "Mandarin" (or so-called "Northern dialects") in a broader sense. Within Chinese social or cultural discourse, there is not a "Mandarin" identity based on language; rather, there are strong regional identities centred on individual dialects because of
3312-541: Is wholly identical to the Beijing dialect . The written forms of Standard Chinese are also essentially equivalent, although simplified characters are used in mainland China and Singapore, while traditional characters remain in use in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Singapore has followed mainland China in officially adopting simplified characters. Mandarin is spoken across northern and southwestern China, with some pockets in neighbouring countries. Unlike their compatriots on
3404-602: The Cyrillic script . The classification of Chinese dialects evolved during the 20th century, and many points remain unsettled. Early classifications tended to follow provincial boundaries or major geographical features. In 1936, Wang Li produced the first classification based on phonetic criteria, principally the evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials. His Mandarin group included dialects of northern and southwestern China, as well as those of Hunan and northern Jiangxi . Li Fang-Kuei 's classification of 1937 distinguished
3496-599: The International Phonetic Alphabet are: The velar consonant [k] is the most common consonant in human languages. The only languages recorded to lack velars (and any dorsal consonant at all) may be Xavante , standard Tahitian (though /tVt/ is pronounced [kVt], a pattern also found in the Niihau dialect of Hawaiian), and arguably several Skou languages ( Wutung , the Dumo dialect of Vanimo , and Bobe ), which have
3588-508: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic, founded in 1949, retained this standard, calling it pǔtōnghuà ( simplified Chinese : 普通话 ; traditional Chinese : 普通話 ; lit. 'common speech'). Some 54% of speakers of Mandarin varieties could understand the standard language in the early 1950s, rising to 91% in 1984. Nationally,
3680-560: The Saanich dialect of Coastal Salish , Salish-Spokane-Kalispel , and Chemakum , *k went further and affricated to [tʃ] . Likewise, historical *k’ has become [tʃʼ] and historical *x has become [ʃ] ; there was no *g or *ŋ. In the Northwest Caucasian languages , historical * [k] has also become palatalized, becoming /kʲ/ in Ubykh and /tʃ/ in most Circassian varieties. In both regions
3772-447: The [b] . The pronunciations / ˈ h æ n b æ ɡ / or / ˈ h æ n d b æ ɡ / are, however, common in normal speech. In contrast, the word "cupboard", although it is historically a compound of "cup" / k ʌ p / and "board" / b ɔːr d / , is always generally pronounced / ˈ k ʌ b ər d / , and almost never / ˈ k ʌ p b ɔːr d / . Like in those examples, sound segments typically assimilate to
Velar consonant - Misplaced Pages Continue
3864-474: The airstream mechanism rather than the place of articulation of the consonant.) Khoekhoe , for example, does not allow velars in medial or final position, but in Juǀʼhoan velars are rare even in initial position. Normal velar consonants are dorso-velar : The dorsum (body) of the tongue rises to contact the velum (soft palate) of the roof of the mouth. In disordered speech there are also velo-dorsal stops, with
3956-548: The rime table tradition that had evolved over the previous centuries, this dictionary contains a wealth of information on the phonology of Old Mandarin. Further sources are the 'Phags-pa script based on the Tibetan alphabet, which was used to write several of the languages of the Mongol empire, including Chinese and the Menggu Ziyun , a rime dictionary based on 'Phags-pa. The rime books differ in some details, but overall show many of
4048-423: The soft palate (velum) opens prematurely or /b/ becoming labialized as in "boot" [bʷuːt̚] or "ball" [bʷɔːɫ] in some accents. This article describes both processes under the term assimilation . The physiological or psychological mechanisms of coarticulation are unknown, and coarticulation is often loosely referred to as a segment being "triggered" by an assimilatory change in another segment. In assimilation,
4140-480: The "even" tone and loss of the entering tone, with its syllables distributed across the other tones (though their different origin is marked in the dictionary). Similarly, voiced plosives and affricates have become voiceless aspirates in the "even" tone and voiceless non-aspirates in others, another distinctive Mandarin development. However, the language still retained a final -m , which has merged with -n in modern dialects and initial voiced fricatives. It also retained
4232-479: The 14th century. In the early 20th century, a standard form based on the Beijing dialect, with elements from other Mandarin dialects, was adopted as the national language . Standard Chinese is the official language of China and Taiwan , as well as one of the four official languages of Singapore . It is also used as one of the official languages of the United Nations . Recent increased migration from Mandarin-speaking regions of China and Taiwan has now resulted in
4324-466: The 18th century, and as a result the Northeastern Mandarin dialects spoken there differ little from the Beijing dialect . The Manchu people of the area now speak these dialects exclusively; their native language is only maintained in northwestern Xinjiang , where Xibe , a modern dialect, is spoken. The frontier areas of northwest China were colonized by speakers of Mandarin dialects at
4416-424: The Beijing accent, and also take some elements from other sources, and deviate from the Beijing dialect in vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatics . Comparison of dictionaries produced in the two areas will show that there are few substantial differences. However, both versions of "school-standard" Chinese are often quite different from the Mandarin varieties that are spoken in accordance with regional habits, and neither
4508-510: The Mandarin group, pointing out that the Lower Yangtze dialects also retain the glottal stop. The southern boundary of the Mandarin area, with the central Wu , Gan and Xiang groups, is weakly defined due to centuries of diffusion of northern features. Many border varieties have a mixture of features that make them difficult to classify. The boundary between Southwestern Mandarin and Xiang is particularly weak, and in many early classifications
4600-583: The Northwestern dialects are the most diverse, particularly in the province of Shanxi . The linguist Li Rong proposed that the northwestern dialects of Shanxi and neighbouring areas that retain a final glottal stop in the Middle Chinese entering tone (plosive-final) category should constitute a separate top-level group called Jin . He used this classification in the Language Atlas of China (1987). Many other linguists continue to include these dialects in
4692-516: The Qing dynasty novel Dream of the Red Chamber and beyond, there developed a literature in written vernacular Chinese ( 白话 ; 白話 ; báihuà ). In many cases, this written language reflected Mandarin varieties and since pronunciation differences were not conveyed in this written form, this tradition had a unifying force across all the Mandarin-speaking regions and beyond. Hu Shih , a pivotal figure of
SECTION 50
#17328687658824784-575: The Southwest (including Sichuanese ) and the Lower Yangtze , are not mutually intelligible with the standard language (or are only partially intelligible). Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly one billion). Mandarin is by far the largest of the Chinese dialect groups ; it is spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over
4876-411: The articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also labial–velar consonants , which are doubly articulated at the velum and at the lips, such as [k͡p] . This distinction disappears with the approximant consonant [w] since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, and this ambiguous situation is often called labiovelar . A velar trill or tap
4968-414: The capital moved to Beijing in 1421, though the speech of the new capital emerged as a rival standard. As late as 1815, Robert Morrison based the first English–Chinese dictionary on this koiné as the standard of the time, though he conceded that the Beijing dialect was gaining in influence. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with
5060-398: The characteristics of neighbouring cheremes may be mixed. Anticipatory assimilation to an adjacent segment is the most common type of assimilation by far, and typically has the character of a conditioned sound change, i.e., it applies to the whole lexicon or part of it. For example, in English , the place of articulation of nasals assimilates to that of a following stop ( handkerchief
5152-556: The country, coupled with a strong decline in usage of other Chinese variants. Standard Singaporean Mandarin is nearly identical to the standards of China and Taiwan, with minor vocabulary differences. It is the Mandarin variant used in education, media, and official settings. Meanwhile, a colloquial form called Singdarin is used in informal daily life and is heavily influenced in terms of both grammar and vocabulary by local languages such as Cantonese, Hokkien, and Malay. Instances of code-switching with English, Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay, or
5244-408: The dialect of Niʻihau and Kauaʻi. Since Hawaiian has no [ŋ] , and ⟨w⟩ varies between [w] and [v] , it is not clearly meaningful to say that Hawaiian has phonemic velar consonants. Several Khoisan languages have limited numbers or distributions of pulmonic velar consonants. (Their click consonants are articulated in the uvular or possibly velar region, but that occlusion is part of
5336-465: The distinction between velars and alveolar sibilants in palatal environments, which later merged in most Mandarin dialects to yield a palatal series (rendered j- , q- and x- in pinyin ). The flourishing vernacular literature of the period also shows distinctively Mandarin vocabulary and syntax, though some, such as the third-person pronoun tā ( 他 ), can be traced back to the Tang dynasty. Until
5428-589: The early 20th century, formal writing and even much poetry and fiction was done in Literary Chinese , which was modeled on the classics of the Warring States period and the Han dynasty . Over time, the various spoken varieties diverged greatly from Literary Chinese, which was learned and composed as a special language. Preserved from the sound changes that affected the various spoken varieties, its economy of expression
5520-483: The empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as Guānhuà . Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, but it was never formally defined. Officials varied widely in their pronunciation; in 1728, the Yongzheng Emperor , unable to understand the accents of officials from Guangdong and Fujian , issued a decree requiring the governors of those provinces to provide for
5612-510: The features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects, such as the reduction and disappearance of final plosives and the reorganization of the Middle Chinese tones. In Middle Chinese, initial stops and affricates showed a three-way contrast between tenuis , voiceless aspirated and voiced consonants. There were four tones , with the fourth or "entering tone", a checked tone comprising syllables ending in plosives ( -p , -t or -k ). Syllables with voiced initials tended to be pronounced with
SECTION 60
#17328687658825704-460: The first half of the twentieth century, wrote an influential and perceptive study of this literary tradition, entitled "A History of Vernacular Literature" ( Báihuà Wénxuéshǐ ). Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people living in many parts of South China spoke only their local variety. As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of
5796-523: The first papers that discussed the affrication of /tr, dr/ is "Pre-School Children's Knowledge of English Phonology" by Charles Read, published in 1971. The study discussed in this paper focuses on how children in pre-school analyze the phonetic aspect of language in order to determine the proper spelling of English words. Read noticed that many of the children involved in the study misspelled words that began with /tr, dr/ , spelling words like troubles and dragon as "chribls" and "jragin", respectively. In
5888-567: The imperial court. The variant of Mandarin as spoken by educated classes in Beijing was made the official language of China by the Qing dynasty in the early 1900s and the successive Republican government. In the early years of the Republic of China , intellectuals of the New Culture Movement , such as Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu , successfully campaigned for the replacement of Literary Chinese as
5980-546: The language being one of the more frequently used varieties of Chinese among Chinese diaspora communities. It is also the most commonly taught Chinese variety . The English word "mandarin" (from Portuguese mandarim , from Malay menteri , from Sanskrit mantrī , mantrin , meaning 'minister or counsellor') originally meant an official of the Ming and Qing empires. Since their native varieties were often mutually unintelligible, these officials communicated using
6072-528: The languages retain a labialized velar series (e.g. [kʷ], [kʼʷ], [xʷ], [w] in the Pacific Northwest) as well as uvular consonants . In the languages of those families that retain plain velars, both the plain and labialized velars are pre-velar , perhaps to make them more distinct from the uvulars which may be post-velar . Prevelar consonants are susceptible to palatalization. A similar system, contrasting *kʲ with *kʷ and leaving *k marginal at best,
6164-404: The latter two groups as Xiang and Gan , while splitting the remaining Mandarin dialects between Northern, Lower Yangtze and Southwestern Mandarin groups. The widely accepted seven-group classification of Yuan Jiahua in 1960 kept Xiang and Gan separate, with Mandarin divided into Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern and Jiang–Huai (Lower Yangtze) subgroups. Of Yuan's four Mandarin subgroups,
6256-826: The lingua franca. The Dungan people of Kyrgyzstan , Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are descendants of Hui people who fled to the Russian Empire from Dzungaria in 1877 after the fall of Kashgaria to Qing forces and from the Ili valley after it was ceded to China in the Treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1881. About 500 speakers live in a compact area in Rovensky District, Saratov Oblast in Russia. The Dungan speak two dialects, descended from Central Plains Mandarin dialects of southeast Gansu and southwest Shaanxi, and write their language in
6348-403: The media, formal speech, and everyday life remains the local Cantonese because of their colonial and linguistic history. While Standard Mandarin is now the medium of instruction in schools throughout China, it still has yet to gain traction as a common language among the local population in areas where Mandarin dialects are not native. In these regions, people may be either diglossic or speak
6440-581: The medial, vowel and coda are combined as a final . Not all combinations occur. For example, Standard Chinese (based on the Beijing dialect) has about 1,200 distinct syllables. Phonological features that are generally shared by the Mandarin dialects include: The maximal inventory of initials of a Mandarin dialect is as follows, with bracketed pinyin spellings given for those present in the standard language: Most Mandarin dialects have three medial glides, /j/ , /w/ and /ɥ/ (spelled i , u and ü in pinyin), though their incidence varies. The medial /w/ ,
6532-463: The merger of retroflex sounds (zh, ch, sh, r) with the alveolar series (z, c, s), frequent mergers of the "neutral tone" with a word's original tone, and absence of erhua . Code-switching between Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien is common, as the majority of the population continues to also speak the latter as a native language. Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Singapore along with English , Malay , and Tamil . Historically, it
6624-411: The modern standard language as but not as Guānhuà . Linguists use the term "Mandarin" to refer to the diverse group of dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China, which Chinese linguists call Guānhuà . The alternative term Běifānghuà ( 北方话 ; 北方話 ; 'Northern dialects'), is used less and less among Chinese linguists. By extension, the term "Old Mandarin" or "Early Mandarin"
6716-531: The mountains and rivers of southern China have spawned the other six major groups of Chinese varieties, with great internal diversity, particularly in Fujian . However, the varieties of Mandarin cover a huge area containing nearly a billion people. As a result, there are pronounced regional variations in pronunciation , vocabulary , and grammar , and many Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible. Most of northeast China , except for Liaoning , did not receive significant settlements by Han Chinese until
6808-497: The nature of a sound law. Proto-Indo-European * -ln- becomes -ll- in both Germanic and Italic: * ḱl̥nis "hill" > PreLat. * kolnis > Lat. collis ; > PGmc *hulliz > OE hyll /hyll/ > hill . The enclitic form of English is , eliding the vowel, becomes voiceless when adjacent to a word-final voiceless nonsibilant: it is [ɪtɪz] , that is [ðætɪz] > it's [ɪts] , that's [ðæts] . In Polish , /v/ regularly becomes /f/ after
6900-460: The nature of sound laws. Such changes abound in the histories of Germanic languages , Romance , Insular Celtic , Albanian , and many others. For example, in the history of English , a back vowel became front if a high front vowel or semivowel (*i, ī, j) was in the following syllable, and a front vowel became higher unless it was already high: On the other hand, Proto-Germanic * i and * u > e, o respectively before *
6992-628: The opposite articulation: The velum lowers to contact the tongue, which remains static. In the extensions to the IPA for disordered speech, these are transcribed by reversing the IPA letter for a velar consonant, e.g. ⟨ 𝼃 ⟩ for a voiceless velodorsal stop, ⟨ 𝼁 ⟩ for voiced, and ⟨ 𝼇 ⟩ for a nasal. Symbols to the right in a cell are voiced , to the left are voiceless . Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible. Legend: unrounded • rounded Assimilation (linguistics) Assimilation
7084-511: The original sound does not reduce with respect to sound segments even though the rising tone on the vowels in the coalesced form indicates the fusion of /á/ to the vowels. Mandarin Chinese Transcriptions: Mandarin ( / ˈ m æ n d ər ɪ n / MAN -dər-in ; simplified Chinese : 官话 ; traditional Chinese : 官話 ; pinyin : Guānhuà ; lit. 'officials' speech')
7176-666: The other six are Wu , Gan , and Xiang in central China and Min , Hakka , and Yue on the southeast coast. The Language Atlas of China (1987) distinguishes three further groups: Jin (split from Mandarin), Huizhou in the Huizhou region of Anhui and Zhejiang , and Pinghua in Guangxi and Yunnan . After the fall of the Northern Song (959–1126) and during the reign of the Jin (1115–1234) and Yuan (Mongol) dynasties in northern China,
7268-426: The phonological patterning of the language, discourse styles and accent are some of the factors contributing to changes observed. There are four configurations found in assimilations: Although all four occur, changes in regard to a following adjacent segment account for virtually all assimilatory changes and most of the regular ones. Assimilations to an adjacent segment are vastly more frequent than assimilations to
7360-459: The preceding vowel is back or front. However, it is difficult to know where and how in the history of Finnish an actual assimilatory change took place. The distribution of pairs of endings in Finnish is not the operation of an assimilatory innovation, but it is probably the outbirth of such an innovation long ago. In the opposite direction, in umlaut , a vowel is modified to conform more closely to
7452-440: The prefix in- of English input pronounced with phonetic [m] rather than [n]. In this case, [n] becomes [m] since [m] is more phonetically similar to [p]. In other cases, the change is accepted as canonical for that word or phrase, especially if it is recognized in standard spelling: implosion pronounced with [m], composed of in- + -plosion (as in explosion ). English "handbag" (canonically / ˈ h æ n d b æ ɡ / )
7544-459: The proportion understanding the standard rose from 41% to 90% over the same period. This standard language is now used in education, the media, and formal occasions in both mainland China and Taiwan , as well as among the Chinese community of Singapore . However, in other parts of the Chinese-speaking world , namely Hong Kong and Macau , the standard form of Chinese used in education,
7636-501: The same time, and the dialects in those areas similarly closely resemble their relatives in the core Mandarin area. The Southwest was settled early, but the population fell dramatically for obscure reasons in the 13th century, and did not recover until the 17th century. The dialects in this area are now relatively uniform. However, long-established cities even very close to Beijing , such as Tianjin , Baoding , Shenyang , and Dalian , have markedly different dialects. Standard Mandarin
7728-442: The southeast coast, few Mandarin speakers engaged in overseas emigration until the late 20th century, but there are now significant communities of them in cities across the world. Most Han Chinese living in northern and southwestern China are native speakers of a dialect of Mandarin. The North China Plain provided few barriers to migration, leading to relative linguistic homogeneity over a wide area in northern China. In contrast,
7820-625: The standard language with a notable accent. However, since the start of the 21st century, there has been an effort of mass education in Standard Mandarin Chinese and discouragement of local language usage by the Chinese government in order to erase these regional differences. From an official point of view, the mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese governments maintain their own forms of the standard under different names. The codified forms of both Pǔtōnghuà and Guóyǔ base their phonology on
7912-525: The teaching of proper pronunciation. Although the resulting Academies for Correct Pronunciation ( 正音書院 ; Zhèngyīn Shūyuàn ) were short-lived, the decree did spawn a number of textbooks that give some insight into the ideal pronunciation. Common features included: As the last two of these features indicate, this language was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. This form remained prestigious long after
8004-585: The two were not separated. Zhou Zhenhe and You Rujie include the New Xiang dialects within Southwestern Mandarin, treating only the more conservative Old Xiang dialects as a separate group. The Huizhou dialects have features of both Mandarin and Wu, and have been assigned to one or other of these groups or treated as separate by various authors. Li Rong and the Language Atlas of China treated it as
8096-497: The vowel in the next syllable. Coalescence is a phonological situation whereby adjacent sounds are replaced by a single sound that shares the features of the two originally adjacent sounds. In other words, coalescence is a type of assimilation whereby two sounds fuse to become one, and the fused sound shares similar characteristics with the two fused sounds. Some examples in English include ‘don’t you’ -> /dəʊnt ju/ -> [dəʊntʃu]. In this instance, /t/ and /j/ have fused to [tʃ]. /tʃ/
8188-706: The wide geographical distribution and cultural diversity of their speakers. Speakers of forms of Mandarin other than the standard typically refer to the variety they speak by a geographic name—for example the Sichuan dialect and the Hebei dialect or Northeastern dialect , all being regarded as distinct from the standard language, with which they may not share much mutual intelligibility. The hundreds of modern local varieties of Chinese developed from regional variants of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese . Traditionally, seven major groups of dialects have been recognized. Aside from Mandarin,
8280-416: The written standard by written vernacular Chinese , which was based on northern dialects. A parallel priority was the definition of a standard national language ( traditional Chinese : 國語 ; simplified Chinese : 国语 ; pinyin : Guóyǔ ; Wade–Giles : Kuo²-yü³ ). After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation ,
8372-547: Was greatly valued. For example, 翼 ( yì ; 'wing') is unambiguous in written Chinese, but has over 75 homophones in Standard Chinese . The literary language was less appropriate for documents that were meant to be performed or recited, such as plays or stories. From at least the Yuan dynasty plays that recounted the subversive tales of China's Robin Hoods to the Ming dynasty novels such as Water Margin , on down to
8464-631: Was seldom used by the Chinese Singaporean community , which primarily spoke the Southern Chinese languages of Hokkien , Teochew , Cantonese , or Hakka . The launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign in 1979 by the government prioritized the language over traditional vernaculars in an attempt to create a common ethnic language and foster closer connections to China. This has led to a significant increase and presence of Mandarin usage in
#881118