The Zhenjiang dialect is a form of Eastern Mandarin spoken in the town of

Zhenjiang Zhenjiang, alternately romanized as Chinkiang, is a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu Province, China. It lies on the southern bank of the Yangtze River near its intersection with the Grand Canal. It is opposite Yangzhou (to its north) and ...

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its ca ...

Province, China. Zhenjiang is situated on the south bank of the

Yangtze river The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest list of rivers of Asia, river in Asia, the list of rivers by length, third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in th ...

between

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

and

Changzhou Changzhou ( Changzhounese: ''Zaon Tsei'', ) is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province, China. It was previously known as Yanling, Lanling and Jinling. Located on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, Changzhou borders the provin ...

. It is thus at the intersection of China's Mandarin and Wu speaking regions. About 2.7 million Chinese live in the area where the Zhenjiang dialect is predominant.Da Yuan-yi,
A Review on the Dialect in the Transitional Belt in Zhenjiang
" ''Journal of Jiangsu University'', July 2003. In ancient times, Zhenjiang spoke Wu. Today, Wu is the language of nearby

, as well as

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

and

Zhejiang Zhejiang ( or , ; , Chinese postal romanization, also romanized as Chekiang) is an East China, eastern, coastal Provinces of China, province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable citie ...

Province. Mandarin speakers from the north have been immigrating to Zhenjiang since the fourth century, gradually changing the character of the local dialect. In modern times, the city speaks a dialect that is transitional between the Eastern Mandarin of Nanjing, located just west of the city, and the Taihu dialect of Wu spoken in Changzhou, which is just east of the city. The Zhenjiang dialect is comprehensible to Nanjing residents, but not to Changzhou residents. The issue of tones in the Zhenjiang dialect has been a topic of scholarly study. Nanjing residents use the

four tones 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 wid ...

of Mandarin, while Changzhou residents use seven or eight tones. According to a study by Qiu Chunan, the Zhenjiang dialect has five citation tones: Tone 1 (42) (a sharp fall from pitch 4 to pitch 2, or ''yinping''), Tone 2 (35) (a rising tone or ''yangping''), Tone 3 (32) (slight falling tone or ''shang''), Tone 4 (55) (high even or ''qu''), and Tone 5 (5) (

checked 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 sy ...

or ''ru'').Qiu, Chunan.
Sandhi Patterns of Zhenjiang Dialect
, ''Speech Prosody'', 2012. Qiu's study used residents who had grown up in the Daxi Road area, where the standard form of the dialect is said to be spoken. The checked tone was a feature of Chinese spoken in the Middle Ages, but it is not part of Mandarin. Applying the theory of government phonology to the issue, Bao Zhiming noted that non-even tones become even when they appear before the high even, or 55, tone.Bao, Zhiming, �
On the nature of tone
��, Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, MIT, Cambridge, 96-104, 1990. See also

by He Junjie (''Dialect'', 2011-01).

References

{{Reflist, 1 Mandarin Chinese Zhenjiang