The Ganyu dialect () is a

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

. It is spoken in

Ganyu District Ganyu District () is under the administration of Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China. It contains the province's northernmost point and is located along the Yellow Sea coast where the coastline takes a sharp turn toward the southeast, and border ...

and

Donghai County Donghai County () is under the administration of Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China. It borders the prefecture-level cities of Linyi (Shandong) to the north and Xuzhou Xuzhou (徐州), also known as Pengcheng (彭城) in ancient times, is ...

, in

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, Postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an Eastern China, eastern coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China. It is o ...

province of

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 ...

. According to the ''

Language Atlas of China The ''Language Atlas of China'' (), published in two parts in 1987 and 1989, maps the distribution of both the varieties of Chinese and minority languages of China. It was a collaborative effort by the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the ...

'', the Ganyu dialect is a kind of

Zhongyuan Mandarin Central Plains Mandarin, or ''Zhongyuan'' Mandarin (), is a variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in the central and southern parts of Shaanxi, Henan, southwestern part of Shanxi, southern part of Gansu, far southern part of Hebei, northern Anhui, n ...

, but this is disputed. Some linguists regard it as one of Central Plains Mandarin like the

Xuzhou dialect The Xuzhou dialect () is a Mandarin dialect spoken in the city of Xuzhou in Jiangsu province, China. Jiangsu has two basic dialect types: that of the south, influenced by Wu, and that of the north. Beginning roughly in the area extending from ...

because of a similar evolution of the entering tone in ancient Chinese with Central Plains Mandarin. However, some linguists think of it as a kind of

Jiaoliao Mandarin Jiaoliao or Jiao–Liao Mandarin () is a primary dialect of Mandarin Chinese, spoken on the Jiaodong Peninsula, from Yantai to Qingdao, Ganyu District in northeastern Jiangsu and the Liaodong Peninsula, from Dalian to Dandong, and in Mishan ...

because of same initial consonant system. In fact, the Ganyu dialect shares more common vocabulary with Jiaoliao Mandarin. It is a little difficult for one whose mother tongue is Central Plains Mandarin to understand Ganyu Dialect. While there are differences in how the Ganyu dialect is spoken, all forms of it are

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

. The accent of someone from northwestern Ganyu sounds more like the one of someone who was born and grew up in the neighboring area of Shandong Province. Linguistics have noted that the Ganyu dialect often weakens certain

syllables A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

and loses certain syllables all together in certain compound words and phrases. A few common examples of the difference between Standard Mandarin and the Ganyu dialect are that or are pronounced "bei" instead of "bai". Another example is the use of the word , pronounced as "you" instead of "rou".

References

Mandarin Chinese Lianyungang {{SinoTibetan-lang-stub