Chengdu-Chongqing dialect

Chengdu-Chongqing dialect or Cheng–Yu (Chinese: 成渝; pinyin: Chéng-Yú; Sichuanese Pinyin: Cen²yu², local pronunciation: [tsʰən˨˩y˨˩]) is the most widely used branch of Southwestern Mandarin, with about 90 million speakers. It is named after Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan, and Chongqing, which was split from Sichuan in 1997. It is spoken mainly in northern and eastern Sichuan, the northeastern part of the Chengdu Plain, several cities or counties in southwestern Sichuan (Panzhihua, Dechang, Yanyuan, Huili and Ningnan), southern Shaanxi and western Hubei.^[1][2]

Chengdu-Chongqing dialect
成渝话
Pronunciation	[tsʰən˨˩y˨˩xua˨˨˦]
Native to	China
Region	Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei and Shaanxi
Native speakers	(undated figure of About 90 million[citation needed])
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Mandarin Southwestern Mandarin Sichuanese Chengdu-Chongqing dialect
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	chen1267  Chengdu Mandarin
Chengdu-Chongqing is the largest deep-green area.

This uniform dialect is formed after the great migration movement in Ming and Qing dynasty, and is greatly influenced by the Chinese varieties of Mandarin the immigrants spoke from Hubei, Xiang and Gan. So it keeps fewer characteristics of Sichuan's original Ba-Shu Chinese than other Sichuanese dialects, such as Minjiang dialect.

Distributions

Chengdu-Chongqing Dialect is spoken within central Chongqing, Chengdu and surrounding provinces. Chengdu-Chongqing dialect is a branch of Sichuan dialect.^[3]

Academically, Chongqing dialects are spoken in main urban area of Chongqing, with one-fifth population of the Chongqing city.^[4][5]

In a broad sense, Chongqing dialect is spoken with all districts of Chongqing City. Eg: Tongliang District, Hechuan District, Fuling District, Zhanjiang District, etc. Chongqing dialect its considered as a branch of Southwestern Mandarin.^[6]

The Chengdu-Chongqing dialect is mutually intelligible with dialects spoken in its satellite districts such Sichuan. But, as all public schools and most broadcast communication in urban Chongqing use Mandarin exclusively, nearly all speakers of the dialect are good at Chongqing dialect and Mandarin. Owing to migration within China, traditional Chongqing dialect is getting similar to Mandarin, many residents of the city cannot speak the local dialect but can usually understand it, and get fluent to it after a few months or years in the area.^[6]

History

With Chinese government declared movement to Chongqing during the World War II, Chongqing became the Provisional capital of the republic of China,^[7] when migration boost the population of the city. Chongqing dialect mixes the merits of various local dialects, with wits and humor, gains popularity with its users.

Phonology

Tone

Chengdu-Chongqing dialect has four phonemic tones: dark level tone, light level tone, rising tone and departing tone. These tones are of same pitch as Sichuan dialects (Minjiang, Renfu, Yajin).^[8]

District	Dark level tone	Light level tone	Rising tone	Departing tone
Chengdu	55	31	53	213
Chongqing	55	21	42	214
Guangyuan	55	21	42	214
Nanchong	55	21	53	14
Jinyang	55	31	52	13
Wanzhou	55	213	42	215
Yichang	55	12	42	35
Qianjiang	55	31	53	24
QIanjiang	55	31	53	24
Panzhihua	55	31	53	213

Initial

The Chengdu-Chongqing dialect in most regions doesn't have tongue retroflex (tʂ group initials), except for Bazhong district and Panxi area (except for Panzhihua), where the consonants of the tongue curling are similar but not the same as Mandarin. Chongqing dialect with 45 districts using has 20 initials, 5 initials do not exist: [ʈʂ], [ʈʂʰ], [ʂ], [ʐ~ɻ], [ȵ]; Chengdu dialect with 77 districts using has 21 initials, 4 initials do not exist: [ʈʂ], [ʈʂʰ], [ʂ], [ʐ~ɻ].^[9]

The following is the initial consonant inventory of Chengdu-Chongqing dialect:^[9]

		Bilabial	Labiodental	Coronal	Alveolo-palatal	Velar
Plosive	plain	b [p]		d [t]		g [k]
	aspirated	p [pʰ]		t [tʰ]		k [kʰ]
Affricate	plain			z [ts]	j [tɕ]
	aspirated			c [tsʰ]	q [tɕʰ]
Fricative	Voiceless		f [f]	s [s]	x [ɕ]	h [x]
	Voiced		v [v]	r [z]
Nasal		m [m]		n [n]		ng [ŋ]
Lateral sound				l [l]
Zero		∅

In particular, the consonants of Chengdu are comparable but not identical to those in Mandarin. See the inventories below:^[10]

	Labial		Coronal		Alveopalatal		Velar
Plosive	p	pʰ	t	tʰ			k	kʰ
Affricate			ts	tsʰ	tɕ	tɕʰ
Nasal	m		n		ɲ		ŋ
Liquid			l, r
Fricative	f	v	s	z	ɕ		x
Glide	ɥ				j		w

Final

A final, the remainder of syllable after the initial, consists of an optional medial glide, a vowel and an optional final consonants. There are 42 types of finals in Sichuan dialect; four Sichuanese finals do not exist in Beijing: [ɛ], [iai], [uɛ], and [yo]. On the other hand, three Beijing finals do not exist in Sichuanese: [ɤ], [iŋ], and [əŋ]. Chengdu dialect with 62 districts using has 36 finals, Chongqing dialect with 37 districts using it has 37 finals.^[9]

The following is the inventory of Sichuanese finals, transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet:

	-Ø					-i or -u				nasal finals
Ø-	/z̩/ i	/ɚ/ er	/a/ a	/o/ o	/ɛ/ e	/ai/ ai	/ei/ ei	/au/ ao	/əu/ ou	/an/ an	/ən/ en	/aŋ/ ang	/oŋ/ ong
i-	/i/ i		/ia/ ia		/iɛ/ ie	/iai/ iai		/iau/ iao	/iəu/ iu	/ian/ ian	/in/ in	/iaŋ/ iang
u-	/u/ u		/ua/ ua		/uɛ/ ue	/uai/ uai	/uei/ ui			/uan/ uan	/uən/ un	/uaŋ/ uang
y-	/y/ ü			/yo/ üo	/ye/ üe						/yn/ ün		/yoŋ/ iong

Vowels and consonants

The tones of the Chongqing-Chengdu dialect are very similar, but not the same as that of Sichuanese. About one third of Sichuan dialects have a special entering tone, with a relatively independent set of finals, e.g.: [iæ], [uæ], [ʊ], [ɘ], [ɐ], [iɐ], [uɐ], [ɔ], [yʊ], [yɵ], etc. These vowels keep the throat tight, ensuring the muscles of the larynx and oral cavity stay tense during pronunciation, so that the entire syllable exhibits a rough and tight state.^[11]

The vowels in Chengdu are given below:^[12]

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	y	u
Mid	ε	ə	ɔ
Low		ɑ

The following table shows the tense vowels of Chengdu-Chongqing dialect, and a comparison with other Sichuanese dialects:^[13]

Example	Chengdu-Chongqing		Minjiang	Renshou-Fushun
	Chengdu	Chongqing	Luzhou	Zigong
搭	[a]	[a]	[æ]	[a]
说	[o]	[o]	[ɵ]	[o]
黑	[ɛ]	[ɛ]	[e]	[ɛ]
踢	[iɛ]	[i]	[ie]	[i]
出	[u]	[u]	[ɵ]	[u]
欲	[yo]	[yu]	[yɵ]	[yi]
湿	[z̩]	[z̩]	[ə]	[z̩]
掐	[ia]	[ia]	[iæ]	[ia]
刮	[ua]	[ua]	[uæ]	[ua]
铁	[iɛ]	[iɛ]	[ie]	[iɛ]
获	[uɛ]	[uɛ]	[ɵ]	[ue]
阅	[yɛ]	[yɛ]	[yɵ]	[yɛ]
药	[yo]	[yo]	[yɵ]	[yo]

Literary and colloquial readings of Chongqing-Chengdu dialect

Affected by Mandarin for a long time, literary and colloquial readings appear in the Chongqing-Chengdu dialect. Colloquial readings are usually the inherent reading style from the ancient Sichuan dialect, mainly appearing in high-frequency everyday communication; literary readings are close to modern Mandarin, normally appearing in written language. The literary and colloquial readings have been developing in the recent decades. However, affected by the promotion of Mandarin Chinese by the Chinese government, literary readings are becoming dominant, and some pronunciations have the tendency to disappear.^[14] Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters in Chengdu are shown below.^[15] Note: the table is only based on 《成都语音的初步研究》in 1958, the changes of Chengdu dialect in recent years are not considered:

Example	Colloquial reading	Literary Reading
严	ŋan2	nʲian2
下	xa4	ɕia4
等	tʰən4	tən3
横	xuan3	xuən2
胯	kʰa2	kʰua4
逼	pie1	pi2

Vocabulary

As a branch of Sichuanese, Chengdu-Chongqing dialect is mainly composed of three parts: ancient Ba-Shu Chinese, vocabulary brought by immigrants in Ming and Qing Dynasties, and lingua franca of ancient China.

Chengdu-Chongqing dialect is a branch of Sichuan dialect, which is very different compared with other Chinese. Yunnan dialect, which is considered very similar to Sichuan dialect, only shares 58.3% identical words.^[16] Sichuan dialect is also influenced by Xiang Chinese and Gan Chinese, the vocabulary of Sichuan dialect is very different from northern Mandarin, with only 47.8% similar vocabulary.^[17]

Recently, many loanwords have been introduced to Chengdu and Chongqing from standard Mandarin and English. Meanwhile, new words are developing Chengdu and Chongqing, which then spread at a dramatic speed through China.^[18][19] For example, “雄起”(xióng qǐ) (meaning to "cheer up"), is a typical Chengdu-Chongqing word that gets popular in China, equivalent to "加油" (jiāyóu) in standard Mandarin.

References

1. 李蓝（2009年第1期），《西南官话的分区（稿）》，方言
2. Wurm, Stephen Adolphe; Li, Rong; Baumann, Theo; Lee, Mei W. (1987). Language Atlas of China. Longman. Map B6. ISBN 978-962-359-085-3.
3. Chen, Shunting; van de Weijer, Jeroen (2018-09-01). "Consonant–vowel interaction in Sichuan Chinese: An element-based analysis". Lingua. 212: 1–9. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2018.05.001. ISSN 0024-3841. S2CID 171472267.
4. Shiyu, Zhai (1996). 《重庆方言志》 (in Chinese). 西南师范大学出版社.
5. Shen, Hong (2010). 重庆方言与城市文化 (in Chinese). 重庆大学出版社. pp. 26–32.
6. Shiyu, Zhai (1996). 《重庆方言志》 (in Chinese). 西南师范大学出版社.
7. Yaojian, Yang (29 April 2015). "回望1937：国民政府迁都重庆". 人民网. Archived from the original on 2016-04-22.
8. Zhen, Shangling (March 1960). "《四川方言音系》". 四川大学学报（社会科学版）.
9. 甄尚灵等 (1960). "《四川方言音系》". 四川大学学报（社会科学版）.
10. Chen, Shunting; van de Weijer, Jeroen (2018-09-01). "Consonant–vowel interaction in Sichuan Chinese: An element-based analysis". Lingua. 212: 1–9. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2018.05.001. ISSN 0024-3841. S2CID 171472267.
11. Jiang, Yu (May 2004). 四川官话雅棉小片入声归阴平研究. 汕头大学.
12. Chen, Shunting; van de Weijer, Jeroen (2018-09-01). "Consonant–vowel interaction in Sichuan Chinese: An element-based analysis". Lingua. 212: 1–9. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2018.05.001. ISSN 0024-3841. S2CID 171472267.
13. Jiang, Yu (May 2004). 《四川官话雅棉小片入声归阴平研究. 汕头大学.
14. Rongchang Cui, Lingli Song. 普通话对成都话语音的影响，语文建设. 1999
15. Shangling, Zhen (1958). "成都语音的初步研究". 四川大学学报（哲学社会科学版）.
16. Cui, Rongchang; 崔荣昌. (1996). Sichuan fang yan yu Ba Shu wen hua (Di 1 ban ed.). Chengdu: Sichuan da xue chu ban she. ISBN 7-5614-1296-7. OCLC 38066742.
17. Cui, Rongchang; 崔荣昌. (1996). Sichuan fang yan yu Ba Shu wen hua (Di 1 ban ed.). Chengdu: Sichuan da xue chu ban she. ISBN 7-5614-1296-7. OCLC 38066742.
18. Chen, Hong (February 2008). "《重庆言子儿的文化透视》". 重庆大学学报(社会科学版).
19. Quanwen Yang, Keying Lu (May 2005). "《当代成都言词新例释——兼论其造词心理与民间文化意蕴》". 西华师范大学学报（哲学社会科学版.