Taishanese (), alternatively
romanized
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
in
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
as Toishanese or Toisanese, in local dialect as Hoisanese or Hoisan-wa, is a dialect of
Yue Chinese
Yue () is a group of similar Sinitic languages spoken in Southern China, particularly in Liangguang (the Guangdong and Guangxi provinces).
The name Cantonese is often used for the whole group, but linguists prefer to reserve that name for t ...
native to
Taishan, Guangdong
Taishan (), alternately romanized in Cantonese as Toishan or Toisan, in local dialect as Hoisan, and formerly known as Xinning or Sunning (), is a county-level city in the southwest of Guangdong province, China. It is administered as part o ...
. Although it is related to
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
, Taishanese has little
mutual intelligibility
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 ...
with the latter. Taishanese is also spoken throughout
Sze Yup
The Siyi (Seiyap or Sze Yup in Cantonese; ) refers to the four former counties of Xinhui (Sunwui), Taishan (Toisan), Kaiping (Hoiping) and Enping (Yanping) on the west side of the Pearl River Delta in Southern Guangdong Province, China.
Geogra ...
(which includes Taishan), located on the western fringe of the
Pearl River Delta
The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region (PRD; ; pt, Delta do Rio das Pérolas (DRP)) is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary, where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. Referred to as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Mac ...
in
Guangdong
Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...
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 ...
. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, most of the
Chinese emigration
Waves of Chinese emigration have happened throughout history. They include the emigration to Southeast Asia beginning from the 10th century during the Tang Dynasty, to the Americas during the 19th century, particularly during the California go ...
to
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
originated from
Sze Yup
The Siyi (Seiyap or Sze Yup in Cantonese; ) refers to the four former counties of Xinhui (Sunwui), Taishan (Toisan), Kaiping (Hoiping) and Enping (Yanping) on the west side of the Pearl River Delta in Southern Guangdong Province, China.
Geogra ...
(or Siyi in the
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...
romanization of
Standard Mandarin Chinese), the area where this variety is natively spoken.
Thus, up to the mid-20th century, Taishanese was the dominant
variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
of the
Chinese language
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...
spoken in
Chinatowns in Canada and the United States
This article discusses Chinatowns in the Americas, urban areas with a large population of people of Chinese descent. The regions include: Canada, the United States, and Latin America.
Locations Canada
Chinatowns in Canada generally exist in the ...
. It was formerly the
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
of the
overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese () refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese.
Terminology
() or ''Hoan-kheh'' () in Hokkien, refe ...
residing in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
Names
The earliest linguistic studies refer to the dialect of Llin-nen or Xinning ().
Xinning was renamed Taishan in 1914, and linguistic literature has since generally referred to the local dialect as the Taishan dialect, a term based on the
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...
romanization of
Standard Mandarin Chinese pronunciation.
[Cantonese speakers have been shown to understand only about 31.3% of what they hear in Taishanese ] Alternative names have also been used. The term Toishan is a convention used by the
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
,
the
Defense Language Institute
The Defense Language Institute (DLI) is a United States Department of Defense (DoD) educational and research institution consisting of two separate entities which provide linguistic and cultural instruction to the Department of Defense, other f ...
and the
2000 United States Census
The United States census of 2000, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2000, to be 281,421,906, an increase of 13.2 percent over the 248,709,873 people enumerated during the 1990 ce ...
. The terms ''Toishan'', ''Toisan'', and ''Toisaan'' are all based on
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
pronunciation and are also frequently found in linguistic and non-linguistic literature.
Hoisan is a term based on the local pronunciation, although it is not generally used in published literature.
These terms have also been anglicized with the suffix ''
-ese'': Taishanese, Toishanese, and Toisanese. Of the previous three terms, ''Taishanese'' is most commonly used in academic literature, to about the same extent as the term ''Taishan dialect''.
The terms Hoisanese and Hoisan-wa
do appear in print literature, although they are used more on the internet.
Another term used is
Sìyì (''
Sze Yup
The Siyi (Seiyap or Sze Yup in Cantonese; ) refers to the four former counties of Xinhui (Sunwui), Taishan (Toisan), Kaiping (Hoiping) and Enping (Yanping) on the west side of the Pearl River Delta in Southern Guangdong Province, China.
Geogra ...
'' or ''Seiyap'' in Cantonese romanization; ). Sìyì or Sze Yup refers to a previous administrative division in the
Pearl River Delta
The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region (PRD; ; pt, Delta do Rio das Pérolas (DRP)) is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary, where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. Referred to as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Mac ...
consisting of the four counties of Taishan,
Kaiping
Kaiping (), postal map romanization, alternately romanization of Chinese, romanized in Cantonese as Hoiping, is a county-level city in Guangdong provinces of China, Province, China. It is located ín the western section of the Pearl River Delt ...
,
Enping
Enping, alternately romanized as Yanping, is a county-level city in Guangdong province, China, administered as part of the prefecture-level city of Jiangmen.
Enping administers an area of and had an estimated population of 460,000 in 2005 ...
and
Xinhui
Xinhui, alternately romanized as Sunwui and also known as Kuixiang, is an urban district of Jiangmen in Guangdong, China. It grew from a separate city founded at the confluence of the Tan and West Rivers. It has a population of about 735,500, ...
. In 1983, a fifth county (
Heshan) was added to the
Jiangmen
Jiangmen (), alternately romanized in Cantonese as Kongmoon, is a prefecture-level city in Guangdong Province in southern China. As of the 2020 census, its three urban districts, plus Heshan City being conurbated, with 2,657,662 inhabitants ar ...
prefecture; so whereas the term Sìyì has become an anachronism, the older term Sze Yup remains in current use in overseas Chinese communities where it is their ancestral home. The term ''Wuyi'' (), literally "five counties", refers to the modern administrative region, but this term is not used to refer to Taishanese.
History
Taishanese originates from the Taishan region, where it is spoken. Taishanese can also be seen as a group of very closely related, mutually intelligible dialects spoken in the various towns and villages in and around Siyi (the four counties of
Toishan,
Hoiping,
Yanping,
Sunwui, phonetized in Cantonese; while "Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Xinhui" as above, is phonetizied in Mandarin).
A vast number of Taishanese immigrants journeyed worldwide through the Taishan diaspora. The Taishan region was a major source of Chinese immigrants through continental
Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World.
Along with th ...
from the late-19th to mid-20th centuries. Taishanese was the predominant dialect spoken by the 19th-century Chinese builders of railroads in North America. Approximately 1.3 million people are estimated to have origins in Taishan. Prior to the signing of the
Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which allowed new waves of Chinese immigrants,
[Although the ]Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplom ...
was repealed by the signing of the Magnuson Act
The Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943, also known as the Magnuson Act, was an immigration law proposed by U.S. Representative (later Senator) Warren G. Magnuson of Washington and signed into law on December 17, 1943, in the United States. It ...
in 1943, immigration from China was still limited to only 2% of the number of Chinese already living in the United States Taishanese was the dominant dialect spoken in
Chinatowns across North America.
Taishanese is still spoken in many
Chinatown
A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...
s throughout
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
, including those of
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
,
Oakland
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...
,
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
,
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
,
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
,
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, and
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
by older generations of Chinese immigrants and their children, but is today being supplanted by mainstream Cantonese and increasingly by Mandarin in both older and newer Chinese communities alike, across the continent.
Relationship with Cantonese
Taishanese is a dialect of the
Yue branch of Chinese, which also includes
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
. However, due to ambiguities in the meaning of "Cantonese" in the English language, as it can refer to both the greater Yue dialect group or its prestige standard (Standard Cantonese), "Taishanese" and "Cantonese" are commonly used in mutually exclusive contexts, i.e. Taishanese is treated separately from "Cantonese". Despite the closeness of the two, they are hardly
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 phonology of Taishanese bears a lot of resemblance to Cantonese, since both of them are part of the same Yue branch. Like other Yue dialects, such as the
Goulou dialects
Goulou is one of the principal groups of Yue dialects. It is spoken around the Guangxi–Guangdong border, and includes the dialects of Yulin and Bobai.
Dialects
Yulin dialect is representative, though Bobai is better known.
*Yulin dialect
* ...
, Taishanese pronunciation and vocabulary may sometimes differ greatly from Cantonese. Although Taishan stands only from the city of Guangzhou, they are separated by numerous rivers, and the dialect of Taishan is among the most linguistically distant Yue dialects from the Guangzhou dialect.
Standard Cantonese functions as a ''lingua franca'' in Guangdong province, and speakers of other Chinese varieties (such as
Chaozhou
Chaozhou (), alternatively Chiuchow, Chaochow or Teochew, is a city in the eastern Guangdong province of China. It borders Shantou to the south, Jieyang to the southwest, Meizhou to the northwest, the province of Fujian to the east, and the Sou ...
,
Minnan,
Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...
) living in Guangdong may also speak Cantonese. On the other hand,
Standard Mandarin Chinese is the standard language of the People's Republic of China and the only legally allowed medium for teaching in schools throughout most of the country (except in minority areas), so residents of Taishan speak Mandarin as well. Although the Chinese government has been making great efforts to popularize Mandarin by administrative means, most Taishan residents do not speak Mandarin in their daily lives, but treat it as a second language, with Cantonese being the lingua franca of their region.
Phonology
Initial consonants
There are 19 to 23
initials
In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that ...
consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
(or onsets) in Taishanese, which is shown in the chart below in
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 ...
:
#The respective nasal onsets (, , and ) are allophones of the pre-nasalized voiced stop onsets (, , and ). The velar nasal (ŋ) sound occurs in both syllable initial and syllable final positions. There is a tendency toward denasalization for initial ŋ as in 耳 /ŋi/
gi‘ear’, 飲/饮 /ŋim/
gim‘to drink’,魚 /ŋuy/
gui‘fish’ and 月 /ŋut/
gut‘moon’. In words like 牙 /ŋa/ ‘tooth’ and 我 /ŋoy/, denasalization does not seem to take place. In syllable final position following the rounded vowel
/ŋ/ is usually modified by a lip-rounding. Examples are: 東 uŋ ‘east’ and、紅Huŋ ‘red’.
#The palatal sibilants (, , and ) are allophones of the respective alveolar sibilants (, , and ) when the first vowel of the final consonant is high ( and ).
#The palatal approximate () is an allophone of the voiced fricative sibilant initial ().
#The palatal approximate () can be a semivowel of the vowel when used as a glide.
#The labio-velar approximate () can be a semivowel of the vowel when used as a glide.
Vowels
There are about seven different vowels in Taishanese:
#The closed front vowel () can be a palatal approximant () as a semivowel.
#The closed back vowel () can be a labiovelar approximant () as a semivowel.
#The rounding of the schwa is variable.
Final consonants
The final consonant (or rime) occurs after the initial sound, which consists of a medial, a nucleus, and a coda. There are three medial (or glides) in Taishanese that occur after the initial sound: null or no medial, , or . There are five main vowels after the medial: , , , , and null or no vowel. There are nine main codas at the end of the final: null or no coda, , , , , , , , and .
Tones
Taishanese is
tonal. There are five contrastive lexical
tones: high, mid, low, mid falling, and low falling.
In at least one Taishanese dialect, the two falling tones have merged into a low falling tone.
There is no
tone sandhi
Tone sandhi is a phonological change occurring in tonal languages, in which the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes change based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes.
It usually simplifies a bidirectional tone into a ...
.
Taishanese has four
changed tone
Cantonese changed tones (also called pinjam; ) occur when a word's tone becomes a different tone due to a particular context or meaning. A "changed" tone is the tone of the word when it is read in a particular lexical or grammatical context, whi ...
s: mid rising, low rising, mid dipping and low dipping. These tones are called changed tones because they are the product of morphological processes (e.g. pluralization of pronouns) on four of the lexical tones. These tones have been analyzed as the addition of a high
floating tone
A floating tone is a morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains neither consonants nor vowels, but only tone. It cannot be pronounced by itself but affects the tones of neighboring morphemes.
An example occurs in Bambara, a Mande language o ...
to the end of the mid, low, mid falling and low falling tones.
The high endpoint of the changed tone often reaches an even higher pitch than the level high tone; this fact has led to the proposal of an expanded number of pitch levels for Taishanese tones.
The changed tone can change the meaning of a word, and this distinguishes the changed tones from tone sandhi, which does not change a word's meaning.
An example of a changed tone contrast is 刷 (to brush) and 刷 (a brush).
Writing system
The writing system is Chinese. Historically, the common written language of
Classical Literary Chinese united and facilitated cross-dialect exchange in dynastic China, as opposed to the spoken dialects which were too different to be mutually intelligible. In the 20th century,
standard written Chinese
Written vernacular Chinese, also known as Baihua () or Huawen (), is the forms of written Chinese based on the varieties of Chinese spoken throughout China, in contrast to Classical Chinese, the written standard used during imperial China up to ...
, based on Mandarin, was codified as the new written standard. As Taishanese is primarily used in speech, characters needed specifically for writing Taishanese are not standardized and may vary. Commonly seen alternatives are shown below.
The sound represented by the
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 ...
symbol (the
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative
The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is , ...
) is particularly challenging, as it has no standard romanization. The digraph "lh" used above to represent this sound is used in
Totonac
The Totonac are an indigenous people of Mexico who reside in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and Hidalgo. They are one of the possible builders of the pre-Columbian city of El Tajín, and further maintained quarters in Teotihuacán (a city wh ...
,
Chickasaw
The Chickasaw ( ) are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands. Their traditional territory was in the Southeastern United States of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee as well in southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classified as ...
and
Choctaw
The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are ...
, which are among several written representations in the languages that include the sound. The alternative "hl" is used in
Xhosa
Xhosa may refer to:
* Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa
* Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people
See als ...
and
Zulu, while "ll" is used in
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
.
Other written forms occur as well.
The following chart compares the personal pronouns among Taishanese, Cantonese, and Mandarin. In Taishanese, the plural forms of the pronouns are formed by changing the tone, whereas in Cantonese and Mandarin, a plural marker (地/哋/等 dei6 and / men, respectively) is added.
See also
*
Varieties of Chinese
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
*
Cantonese culture
Lingnan culture, or Cantonese culture, refers to the regional Chinese culture of the region of Lingnan: twin provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, the names of which mean "eastern expanse" and "western expanse" respectively.
Strictly speaking, t ...
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* (Ph.D. Dissertation)
*
*
* (Ph.D. Dissertation)
*
*
*
*
*
*
* (Ph.D. Dissertation)
*
*
;Notes
External links
* Taishanese Resources Website
* Taishanese Language Blog
* Taishanese Language Blog
* You can download the Defense Language Institute's 'Chinese-Cantonese (Toishan) Basic Course' audio and text material here
Chinese Character to Taishanese Lookup tool
*Gene M. Chin
"Hoisanva Sites" Alphabetical Dictionary and Lessons.
{{Guangdong topics
Yue Chinese
Taishan, Guangdong
Languages of China
Siyi
es:Dialecto taishanés