Romanisation 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 ...

of the

Wenzhou dialect Wenzhounese (), also known as Oujiang (), Tong Au () or Au Nyü (), is the language spoken in Wenzhou, the southern prefecture of Zhejiang, China. Nicknamed the "Devil's Language" () for its complexity and difficulty, it is the most divergent div ...

Wu Chinese The Wu languages (; Romanization of Wu Chinese, Wu romanization and Romanization of Wu Chinese#IPA, IPA: ''wu6 gniu6'' [] (Shanghainese), ''ng2 gniu6'' [] (Suzhounese), Mandarin pinyin and IPA: ''Wúyǔ'' []) is a major group of Sinitic languag ...

, part of the greater Ōu () grouping of Wu dialects centred on the city, refers to the use of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

to represent the sounds of the dialect group.

Early romanisation

The first instance of Wenzhounese romanisation begins with the

language documentation Language documentation (also: documentary linguistics) is a subfield of linguistics which aims to describe the grammar and use of human languages. It aims to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speec ...

efforts of Christian missionaries who translated the Bible into many varieties of Chinese in both Chinese characters and in phonetic romanisation systems based largely on the Wade-Giles system. The first romanised form of Wenzhounese can be seen in an 1892

Gospel of Matthew The Gospel of Matthew), or simply Matthew. It is most commonly abbreviated as "Matt." is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people and for ...

translation.

Contemporary

In 2004, father-and-son team Shen Kecheng () and Shen Jia () published the work ''Wenzhouhua'' (), which outlines a systematic method for romanising each initial and rhyme of the dialect. Its primary orthographic innovation is its means of expressing the three-way distinction of Wu stops in an orthography that distinguishes only between voiced and unvoiced stops. The Wade-Giles-based systems deal with this as k, k', and g to represent , , and . Since voiced

obstruent An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...

s no longer exist in

Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern Standar ...

, pinyin deals with and as ''g'' and ''k'' respectively. The Shens use the same basic method and transcribe voiced stops by duplicating the voiced series of letters so is ''gg'' in the system. Likewise, is transcribed as ''hh''. They adopt other pinyin conventions, such as ''x'' for what is normally transcribed in Chinese usage of 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 ...

as and ''c'' for . Vowels are transcribed with a number of digraphs, but few are innovations. The influence of Chinese

IME Ime is a village in Lindesnes municipality in Agder county, Norway. The village is located on the east side of the river Mandalselva, along the European route E39 highway. Ime is an eastern suburb of the town of Mandal. Ime might be considered ...

s is seen in their system as well since ''v'' denotes and ''ov'' denotes . Another way that it diverges from pinyin is in Wenzhounese's unrounded alveolar apical vowel , which is written as ''ii'', since, unlike Mandarin, apical vowels are not in complementary distribution with in Wenzhounese. Tones, however, are marked not by diacritics or tone spelling but by simply placing superscript values of Chao's tone lettering system.

Rhymes

Initials

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wenzhounese Romanisation Wu Chinese Wenzhou Romanization

Early romanisation

Contemporary

Rhymes

Initials

See also

References