Zhangzhou dialect


The Zhangzhou dialect, also known as Changchew dialect or Changchow dialect, is a dialect of Hokkien spoken in southern Fujian province, centered on the city of Zhangzhou. It is the source of some former place names in English, including Amoy and Quemoy.

Classification

The Zhangzhou dialect is a variety of Hokkien, a group of Southern Min dialects. In Fujian, the Zhangzhou dialect forms the southern subgroup of Southern Min. It is one of the oldest dialects of Southern Min, and along the Quanzhou dialect, it forms the basis for all modern varieties. When compared with other varieties of Hokkien, it has an intelligibility of 89.0% with the Amoy dialect and 79.7% with the Quanzhou dialect.

Phonology

This section is mostly based on the variety spoken in the urban area of Zhangzhou.

Initials

There are 15 phonemic initials:
When the rime is nasalized, the three voiced phonemes, and are realized as the nasals, and, respectively.
The place of articulation of the alveolar phonemes,, and is slightly further back, as if between that of and ; palatalization of these phonemes is especially obvious before rimes that begin with, e.g. 入.

Rimes

There are 85 rimes:
The vowel is the open central unrounded vowel in most rimes, including,,,,,,,,. In the rimes and, is realized as or .
The rimes and are usually realized with a short between the vowel and the velar consonant. In many areas outside of the urban area of Zhangzhou, including Pinghe, Changtai, Yunxiao, Zhao'an and Dongshan, and are pronounced as and instead.
The codas, and are unreleased, i.e., and, respectively.

Tones

There are seven tones:
No.1234567
Tone namedark level
陰平 / 阴平		light level
陽平 / 阳平		rising
上聲 / 上声		dark departing
陰去 / 阴去		light departing
陽去 / 阳去		dark entering
陰入 / 阴入		light entering
陽入 / 阳入
Tone contour
Example hanzi東 / 东同董棟 / 栋動 / 动督獨 / 独

Most people in the urban area do not pronounce the dark level tone as high-level, but slightly mid-rising. While most sources still records this tone as 44, its tone value has also been recorded as 24, 45, 34 or 35 to reflect its rising nature.

Tone sandhi

The Zhangzhou dialect has extremely extensive tone sandhi rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced is not affected by the rules. The two-syllable tone sandhi rules are shown in the table below: