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Luoyang Dialect
The Luoyang dialect is a dialect of Zhongyuan Mandarin spoken in Luoyang and nearby parts of Henan province. The old Luoyang dialect served as one of historical standards of Chinese from the Warring States period into the Ming Dynasty, which distinguish from the modern Luoyang dialect. It is because Luoyang switched from Southern to Northern Mandarin over history. According to Lü Shuxiang (1985), "In Northern Song dynasty, the dialects at the Central Plains are still in the southern variety f Mandarin the predecessor of modern Northern Mandarin began as a tiny regional dialect near Khanbaliq". Phonology Initials Finals Features *The Middle Chinese entering tone has a different distribution in the Luoyang dialect than in Standard Mandarin. (See entering tone A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone ...
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China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land, the most of any country in the world, tied with Russia. Covering an area of approximately , it is the world's third largest country by total land area. The country consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The national capital is Beijing, and the most populous city and financial center is Shanghai. Modern Chinese trace their origins to a cradle of civilization in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. The semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE and the well-attested Shang and Zhou dynasties developed a bureaucratic political system to serve hereditary monarchies, or dyna ...
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Retroflex Consonant
A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants—especially in Indology. The Latin-derived word ''retroflex'' means "bent back"; some retroflex consonants are pronounced with the tongue fully curled back so that articulation involves the underside of the tongue tip ( subapical). These sounds are sometimes described as "true" retroflex consonants. However, retroflexes are commonly taken to include other consonants having a similar place of articulation without such extreme curling of the tongue; these may be articulated with the tongue tip (apical) or the tongue blade (laminal). Types Retroflex consonants, like other coronal consonants, come in several varieties, depending on the shape of the tongue. The tongue may be eith ...
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Standard Chinese Phonology
This article summarizes the phonology (the sound system, or in more general terms, the pronunciation) of Standard Chinese (Standard Mandarin). Standard Chinese phonology is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Actual production varies widely among speakers, as they introduce elements of their native varieties (although television and radio announcers are chosen for their ability to produce the standard variety). Elements of the sound system include not only the segments – the vowels and consonants – of the language but also the tones that are applied to each syllable. Standard Chinese has four main tones, in addition to a neutral tone used on weak syllables. This article represents phonetic values using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), noting correspondences chiefly with the Pinyin system for transcription of Chinese text. For correspondences with other systems, see the relevant articles, such as Wade–Giles, Bopomofo (Zhuyin), Gwoyeu Romatzyh, etc., and Rom ...
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Tone Contour
A tone contour, or contour tone, is a tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word. Tone contours are especially common in East, Southeast Asia, West Africa, Nilo-Saharan languages, Khoisan languages, Oto-Manguean languages and some languages of South America. Contours When the pitch descends, the contour is called a ''falling tone;'' when it ascends, a ''rising tone;'' when it descends and then returns, a ''dipping'' or ''falling-rising tone;'' and when it ascends and then returns, it is called a ''peaking'' or ''rising-falling tone.'' A tone in a contour-tone language which remains at approximately an even pitch is called a ''level tone.'' Tones which are too short to exhibit much of a contour, typically because of a final plosive consonant, may be called '' checked, abrupt, clipped,'' or ''stopped tones.'' It has been theorized that the relative timing of a contour tone is not distinctive. That is, in some accents or ...
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Entering Tone
A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a syllable that ends in a stop consonant or a glottal stop. Separating the checked tone allows ''-p'', ''-t'', and ''-k'' to be treated as allophones of ''-m'', ''-n'', and ''-ng'', respectively, since they are in complementary distribution. Stops appear only in the checked tone, and nasals appear only in the other tones. Because of the origin of tone in Chinese, the number of tones found in such syllables is smaller than the number of tones in other syllables. In Chinese phonetics, they have traditionally been counted separately. For instance, in Cantonese, there are six tones in syllables that do not end in stops but only three in syllables that do so. That is why although Cantonese has only six tones, in the sense of six contrasting variatio ...
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Palatal Approximant
The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic notation it is . Because the English name of the letter J, ''jay'', starts with (voiced palato-alveolar affricate), the approximant is sometimes instead called ''yod'' (jod), as in the phonological history terms yod-dropping and yod-coalescence. The palatal approximant can often be considered the semivocalic equivalent of the close front unrounded vowel . They alternate with each other in certain languages, such as French, and in the diphthongs of some languages as and , with the non-syllabic diacritic used in different phonetic transcription systems to represent the same sound. Some languages, however, have a palatal approximant that is unspecified for rounding and so cannot be considered the semivocalic equivalent of either or its r ...
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Labio-palatal Approximant
A labio-palatalized sound is one that is simultaneously labialized and palatalized. Typically the roundedness is compressed, like , rather than protruded like . The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for this secondary articulation is , a superscript , the symbol for the labialized palatal approximant. If such sounds pattern with other, labialized, consonants, they may instead be transcribed as palatalized consonants plus labialization, , as with the = of Abkhaz or the = of Akan. A voiced labialized palatal approximant occurs in Mandarin Chinese and French, but elsewhere is uncommon, as it is generally dependent upon the presence of front rounded vowels such as and , which are themselves not common. However, a labialized palatal approximant and labio-palatalized consonants appear in some languages without front rounded vowels in the Caucasus and in West Africa, such as Abkhaz, and as allophones of labialized consonants before , including the at the beginning ...
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Labio-velar Approximant
Labiovelar consonant may refer to: * Labial–velar consonant such as (a consonant made at two places of articulation, one at the lips and the other at the soft palate) * Labialized velar consonant such as or (a consonant with an approximant-like secondary articulation) * Velarized Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of four d ...
bilabial consonant such as or , also a consonant with an approximant-like secondary articulation {{Phonetics disambiguation ...
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Lateral Consonant
A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English ''L'', as in ''Larry''. Lateral consonants contrast with central consonants, in which the airstream flows through the center of the mouth. For the most common laterals, the tip of the tongue makes contact with the upper teeth (see dental consonant) or the upper gum (see alveolar consonant), but there are many other possible places for laterals to be made. The most common laterals are approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a ...s and belong to the class of liquid consonant, liquids, but lateral fricative consonant, fricatives and affricate co ...
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Fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German (the final consonant of ''Bach''); or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh (appearing twice in the name ''Llanelli''). This turbulent airflow is called frication. A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants. When forming a sibilant, one still is forcing air through a narrow channel, but in addition, the tongue is curled lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of the teeth. English , , , and are examples of sibilants. The usage of two other terms is less standardized: "Spirant" is an older term for fricatives used by some American and European phoneticians and phonologists. "Strident" could mean just "sibilant", but some authors include also labiodental and uvular fricatives in ...
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Affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricate phonemes, and , often spelled ''ch'' and ''j'', respectively. Examples The English sounds spelled "ch" and "j" ( broadly transcribed as and in the IPA), German and Italian ''z'' and Italian ''z'' are typical affricates, and sounds like these are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in Polish and Chinese. However, voiced affricates other than are relatively uncommon. For several places of articulation they are not attested at all. Much less common are labiodental affricates, such as in German and Izi, or velar affricates, such as in Tswana (written ''kg'') or in High Alemannic Swiss German dialects. Worldwide, relatively few languages have af ...
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Plosive
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips (, ), or glottis (). Plosives contrast with nasals, where the vocal tract is blocked but airflow continues through the nose, as in and , and with fricatives, where partial occlusion impedes but does not block airflow in the vocal tract. Terminology The terms ''stop, occlusive,'' and ''plosive'' are often used interchangeably. Linguists who distinguish them may not agree on the distinction being made. The terms refer to different features of the consonant. "Stop" refers to the airflow that is stopped. "Occlusive" refers to the articulation, which occludes (blocks) the vocal tract. "Plosive" refers to the release burst (plosion) of the consonant. Some object to the use of "plosive" for inaudibly released stops, which may then instead be ca ...
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