Leizhou Min


Leizhou Min is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Leizhou city, Xuwen County, Mazhang District, most parts of Suixi County and also spoken inside of the linguistically diverse Xiashan District. In the classification of Yuan Jiahua, it was included in the Southern Min group, though it has low intelligibility with other Southern Min varieties. In the classification of Li Rong, used by the Language Atlas of China, it was treated as a separate Min subgroup. Hou Jingyi combined it with Hainanese in a Qiong–Lei group.

Phonology

Leizhou Min has 17 initials, 47 rimes and 8 tones.

Initials

The phoneme given here as is described by Li and Thompson instead as.

Rimes

Tones

Leizhou has six tones, which are reduced to two in checked syllables.
Tone numberTone nameTone contourDescription
1yin ping rising
2yin shang falling
3yin qu bottom
4yin ru high checked
5yang ping low
6yang shang mid
7yang qu high
8yang ru low checked