Tiantai dialect
The Tiantai dialect, also known as Tiantaihua is a regiolect of Wu Chinese in the Taizhou Wu dialect group. It is spoken in Tiantai County, Taizhou, Zhejiang province, China.
Like other dialects in the Wu family, Tiantaihua has a three-way contrast between voiced, unaspirated voiceless, and aspirated initial consonants, preserving an earlier feature of Chinese which Mandarin has collapsed into a two-way distinction.
The Tiantai dialect is the main representative of the northern Taizhou dialect family.
Comparison with Standard Chinese
The meaning of many common words and phrases in the Tiantai dialect differs from that of Standard Chinese. Below is a list of common differences:| Chinese word | Original meaning | Meaning in the Tiantai dialect | References |
| 味道 | Taste | Comfort, enjoyment | |
| 老實好 | Honestly good | Praise, very good | |
| 煞夾 | Tightly squeezed | Very powerful | |
| 老官 | Veteran official | Husband | |
| 天亮 | Sunrise, dawn | Tomorrow | |
| 拔好 | Properly pulled | Immediately | |
| 活動 | Activity | Smart, intelligent | |
| 壽 | Longevity | Silliness, lack of empathy | |
| 賴 | Sloppy | Bad behaviour | |
| 大慧 | Very intelligent | Able person | |
| 大吹 | Big blow | Stupid person |
Proverbs and phrases in the Tiantai dialect can be shorter in comparison with the corresponding phrase in Standard Chinese. For example, the phrase "露出馬腳" is shortened to the phrase "出腳", literally meaning "taking the foot out".
Sentences can be shorter as well; see the example below.
Pronouns
Syllable structure
Initials
Finals
Tones
There are 8 tones in the Tiantai dialect, which are obtained by splitting each of the four tones in Mandarin to yin and yang.| Tone name | Tone letters |
| yin ping | |
| yang ping | |
| yin shang | |
| yang shang | |
| yin qu | |
| yang qu | |
| yin ru | |
| yang ru |