Qiyang dialect


Qiyang dialect is a dialect of Xiang Chinese spoken in Qiyang County, Hunan province.

Tones

Qiyang dialect is quite unusual in that it is reported to have two "double contour" tones, high and low fall–rise–fall, or perhaps high falllow fall and low fall – high fall: the entering tones yin qu and yang qu . However, phonetically the pitch of a syllable depends on the voicing of the initial consonant, so these are phonemically a single tone. Moreover, the final fall of the yin qu tone is "not perceptually relevant", so it may be that 'dipping' and 'peaking' are a sufficient categorization.