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Jian'ou dialect
Jian'ou dialect
Traditional Chinese	建甌話
Simplified Chinese	建瓯话
Hanyu Pinyin
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	Jiàn'ōuhuà
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	建甌事
Simplified Chinese	建瓯事
Jian'ou Romanized
Transcriptions
Northern Min
Jian'ou Romanized	Gṳ̿ing-é-dī; (IPA: [kuiŋ˧ ɪ˥˦ ti˦])

Jian'ou
Jian'ou
Gṳ̿ing-é-dī / 建甌事
Pronunciation	[kuiŋ˧ ɪ˥˦ ti˦]
Native to	Southern China
Region	Jian'ou, Fujian province
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Min Inland Min Northern Min Jian'ou; ; ; ; ; ;
Early forms	Proto-Sino-Tibetan Old Chinese Proto-Min ; ;
Writing system	Chinese character, Kienning Colloquial Romanized
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	jian1240
	This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Bible in Jian'ou Romanised (Genesis), published by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

The Jian'ou dialect (Northern Min: Gṳ̿ing-é-dī / 建甌事; Chinese: simplified Chinese: 建瓯话; traditional Chinese: 建甌話; pinyin: Jiàn'ōuhuà), also known as Kienow dialect, is a local dialect of Northern Min Chinese spoken in Jian'ou in northern Fujian province. It is regarded as the standard common language in Jian'ou.

Phonetics and phonology

According to The Eight Tones of Kien-chou (建州八音), a rime dictionary published in 1795, the Jian'ou dialect had 15 initials, 34 rimes and 7 tones in the 18th century, however there are only 6 tones in the modern dialect as the "light level" (陽平) tone has disappeared.

Initials

Initials of the Jian'ou dialect
		Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless unaspirated	p	t	k	ʔ
Plosive	voiceless aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	kʰ
Affricate	voiceless unaspirated		ts
Affricate	voiceless aspirated		tsʰ
Fricative			s	x
Approximant			l

Rimes

Rimes of the Jian'ou dialect
	Open syllable										Nasal coda
Open mouth		a	e^[4]	ɛ	œ	ɔ	o^[5]	ai	au			aŋ	aiŋ	eiŋ	œyŋ	ɔŋ ^[6]
Even mouth	i	ia		iɛ		iɔ			iau	iu	iŋ	iaŋ		ieiŋ^[7]		iɔŋ
Closed mouth	u	ua		uɛ ^[8]				uai			uiŋ ^[9]	uaŋ	uaiŋ			uɔŋ
Round mouth	y			yɛ ^[8]							yiŋ ^[9]

Tones

Jian'ou has four tones, which are reduced to two in checked syllables.

Tone chart of the Jian'ou dialect
Tone number	Tone name	Tone contour
1	level (平聲)	˥˦ (54) or ˥ (5)
2	rising (上聲)	˨˩ (21) or ˩ (1)
3	dark departing (陰去)	˨ (2)
4	light departing (陽去)	˦ (4)
5	dark entering (陰入)	˨˦ (24)
6	light entering (陽入)	˦˨ (42)

The entering tones in the Jian'ou dialect do not have any entering tone coda (入聲韻尾) such as /-ʔ/, /-p̚/, /-t̚/ and /-k̚/ which makes it distinct from many other Chinese varieties.

Notes

^ Min is believed to have split from Old Chinese, rather than Middle Chinese like other varieties of Chinese.^[1]^[2]^[3]

References

^ Mei, Tsu-lin (1970), "Tones and prosody in Middle Chinese and the origin of the rising tone", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30: 86–110, doi:10.2307/2718766, JSTOR 2718766
^ Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1984), Middle Chinese: A study in Historical Phonology, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, p. 3, ISBN 978-0-7748-0192-8
^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (2023-07-10). "Glottolog 4.8 - Min". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7398962. Archived from the original on 2023-10-13. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
^ /e/ tends to merge to [ɪ]
^ /o/ tends to merge to [ʊ]
^ /oŋ/ which is mentioned in Kienning Colloquial Romanized has merged into /ɔŋ/ in the modern dialect.
^ /ieiŋ/ is not mentioned in Kienning Colloquial Romanized as it diverged from /iŋ/ after the romanization system was established.
^ ^a ^b /yɛ/ tends to merge into /uɛ/.
^ ^a ^b /yiŋ/ tends to merge into /uiŋ/.

Sources

Beijing daxue Zhongguo yuyan wenxue xi yuyanxue jiaoyanshi 北京大學中國語言文學系語言學教研室 (1989). Hànyǔ fāngyīn zìhuì 漢語方音字匯 (in Chinese). Beijing: Wenzi gaige chubanshe.
Yuan, Jiahua 袁家驊 (1989). Hànyǔ fāngyán gàiyào 漢語方言概要 [An Introduction to Chinese Dialects] (in Chinese). Beijing: Wenzi gaige chubanshe.
Jianou Xian difangzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui 建瓯县地方志编纂委员会 (1994). Jiànōu xiànzhì 建瓯县志 [Chorography of Jian'ou County]. Vol. 36. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. ISBN 7-101-01283-3. Archived from the original on 2018-04-07. Retrieved 2018-04-06.
Lien, Chinfa (1990). "Competing Final Systems in the Jian'ou Dialect" (PDF). Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies. 20 (1): 1–53.
Norman, Jerry (2002) [1988]. Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29653-6.