Chang-Du or Chang-Jing, sometimes called Nanchang () after its principal dialect, is one of the

Gan Chinese Gan, Gann or Kan is a group of Sinitic languages spoken natively by many people in the Jiangxi province of China, as well as significant populations in surrounding regions such as Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, and Fujian. Gan is a member of the Siniti ...

languages. It is named after

Nanchang Nanchang (, ; ) is the capital of Jiangxi Province, People's Republic of China. Located in the north-central part of the province and in the hinterland of Poyang Lake Plain, it is bounded on the west by the Jiuling Mountains, and on the east ...

and

Duchang County Duchang () is a county in the north-northeast of Jiangxi province, People's Republic of China. Containing part of Poyang Lake, it is under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level city of Jiujiang Jiujiang (), formerly transliterated Kiukiang o ...

, and is spoken in those areas as well as in Xinjian, Anyi, Yongxiu, De'an, Xingzi, Hukou, and bordering regions in

Jiangxi Jiangxi (; ; formerly romanized as Kiangsi or Chianghsi) is a landlocked province in the east of the People's Republic of China. Its major cities include Nanchang and Jiujiang. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north int ...

and in

Pingjiang County Pingjiang County () is a county in the northeast of Hunan province, China. It is the easternmost county-level division of the prefecture-level city of Yueyang. The county is located on the eastern margin of the province, the Miluo River runs thr ...

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to ...

Phonology

The Nanchang dialect has 19

syllable onset 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 ...

s or initials (including the zero initial), 65 finals and 7 tones.

Initials

In each cell below, the first line indicates

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

transcription, the second indicates pinyin.

Finals

The finals of the Nanchang dialect are:Yan (2006), pp. 150–151, based on ''Hanyu Fangyin Zihui''.

Consonantal codas

* The codas in ''italic'' are at present only reserved in several Gan dialects.

Tone

Like other Chinese varieties, tones in Gan make phonemic distinctions. There are five phonemic tones in Gan, which are reduced to two '

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 syl ...

s' before stop consonants. In the traditional classification, these are considered separately: The 6th and 7th tones are the same as the 4th and 5th tones, except that the syllable ends in a stop consonant, or .

Example

A poem of

Meng Haoran Meng Haoran (; 689/691–740) was a major Tang dynasty poet, and a somewhat older contemporary of Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu. Despite his brief pursuit of an official career, Meng Haoran mainly lived in and wrote about the area in which he was ...

(“Men Hau-len” in Gan):

References

* Běijīng Dàxué Zhōngguó yǔyán wénxuéxì yǔyánxué jiàoyánshì (1989). ''Hànyǔ fāngyīn zìhuì''. Běijīng: Wénzì gǎigé chūbǎnshè. (北京大學中國語言文學系語言學教研室. 1989. 漢語方音字匯. 北京: 文字改革出版社) * Norman, Jerry.

988 Year 988 ( CMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * Fall – Emperor Basil II, supported by a contingent of 6,000 Varangians ...

(2002). ''Chinese''. Cambridge, England: CUP * Yuán, Jiāhuá (1989). ''Hànyǔ fāngyán gàiyào'' (An introduction to Chinese dialects). Beijing, China: Wénzì gǎigé chūbǎnshè. (袁家驊. 1989. 漢語方言概要. 北京:文字改革出版社.)

External links

Cantonese and other dialects
(in Chinese)
Classification of Gan Dialects from Glossika
Gan Chinese {{st-lang-stub