Meixian dialect


Meixian dialect, also known as Moiyen dialect, as well as Meizhou, or Jiaying dialect, is the prestige dialect of Hakka Chinese and the basis for the Hakka dialects in Taiwan. It is named after Meixian District, Guangdong.

Phonology

Initials

There are two series of stops and affricates in Hakka, both voiceless: tenuis and aspirated.
* When the initials , , , and are followed by a palatal medial , they become , , , and , respectively.

Rimes

Moiyen Hakka has six vowels, i, e, a, ə, ɔ, and u, that are romanised as i, ê, a, e, o and u, respectively.
FrontCentralBack
Close
Mid
Open

Finals

Moreover, Hakka finals exhibit the final consonants found in Middle Chinese, namely which are romanised as m, n, ng, b, d, and g respectively in the official Moiyen romanisation.

Tone

Moiyen has four tones, which are reduced to two in a checked syllable. The Middle Chinese fully voiced initial syllables became aspirated voiceless initial syllable in Hakka. Before that happened, the four Middle Chinese 'tones', ping, shang, qu, ru, underwent a voicing split in the case of ping and ru, giving the dialect six tones in traditional accounts.
Tone numberTone nameHanziTone lettersnumberEnglish
1yin ping陰平44high
2yang ping陽平11low
3shang上31low falling
4qu去53high falling
5yin ru陰入1low checked
6yang ru陽入5high checked

These so-called yin-yang tonal splittings developed mainly as a consequence of the type of initial a Chinese syllable had during the Middle Chinese stage in the development of Chinese, with voiceless initial syllables tending to become of the yin type, and the voiced initial syllables developing into the yang type. In modern Moiyen Hakka however, part of the Yin Ping tone characters have sonorant initials originally from the Middle Chinese Shang tone syllables and fully voiced Middle Chinese Qu tone characters, so the voiced/voiceless distinction should be taken only as a rule of thumb.
Hakka tone contours differs more as one moves away from Moiyen. For example, the Yin Ping contour is in Changting and in Sixian, Taiwan.
;Entering tone
Hakka preserves all of the entering tones of Middle Chinese and it is split into two registers. Meixian has the following:
Middle Chinese entering tone syllables ending in whose vowel clusters have become front high vowels like and shifts to syllables with finals in modern Hakka as seen in the following table.
CharacterGuangyun FanqieMiddle Chinese
reconstruction		HakkaMain meaning in English
職之翼切tɕĭəktsit˩vocation, profession
力林直切lĭəklit˥strength, power
食乗力切dʑʰĭəksit˥eat, consume
色所力切ʃĭəkset˩colour, hue
德多則切təktet˩virtue
刻苦得切kʰəkkʰet˩carve, engrave, a moment
北博墨切pəkpet˩north
國古或切kuəkkuet˩country, state

Tone sandhi

For Moiyen Hakka, the yin ping and qu tone characters exhibit sandhi when the following character has a lower pitch. The pitch of the yin ping tone changes from to when sandhi occurs. Similarly, the qu tone changes from to under sandhi. These are shown in red in the following table.
+ Yin Ping+ Yang Ping+ Shang+ Qu+ Yin Ru+ YangRu+ Neutral
Yin Ping +
Qu +

The neutral tone occurs in some postfixes. It has a mid pitch.