Hunan 2

Listen to Hunan 2, a 19-year-old woman from Yueyang, Hunan Province, China. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 19

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/11/1991

PLACE OF BIRTH: Yueyang, Hunan Province

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Han Chinese

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: At the time of the recording, the subject was in her first year at university.

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

Subject came to live in Suzhou, Jiangsu, seven months before the date of the recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She had two native English-speaking teachers in her senior high school, and they will have had some influence. She has studied English for almost two semesters at a university in Suzhou, where she has encountered foreign teachers on a weekly basis. Despite this, her accent remains strongly influenced by her native dialect, especially since she has had limited exposure to native English-speaking teachers while in college.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/04/2011

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

(Hmm) I want to say something (ahm) about my hometown, Yueyang. (Hmm) Yueyang, which located in the side of Dongting Lake, is in Hunan Province in China. (Hmm) There are many charming tourist sites. For example, Yueyang Tower one of the three most famous towers in China. And (ah) Jun Shan island – it is named the Love Island, so it is very beautiful. Of course, the most important of Jun Shan is (ah) Jun Shan flavoured tea. (Hmmm) There are also the bridge of Donting Lake is very long and (ah) is over the Donting Lake.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/04/2011

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Short readings from the analects of Confucius

The subject now goes on to read the following abstracts from the Analects of Confucius in her own Yueyanghua dialect, a sub-dialect of the Xiang language. A reading in Putonghua (Mandarin) can be heard on theHebei1 sample.

KEY: A = Mandarin (Simplified); B = Mandarin (Pingyin); C = Dialect (Pingyin); D = English.

孔子: 论语 – Kǒng zǐ : lún yǔ – Kong zi : lun yu – Confucius: Lun Yu

學而第一 – xué ér dì yī – Huo er di yie – Chapter One

A: 1-1:-  子曰: 學而時習之、不亦說乎。

B: yī-yī :-  zǐ yuē: xué ér shí xí zhī, bù yì yuè hū.

C: yī-yī :-  zǐ wǎ: xiō ér sē xī zī, bèi yì lò fū.

D: 1-1:-  The Master said: Is it not pleasure to learn, and practice what is learned time and again?

A: 1-2:- 有朋自遠方來、不亦樂乎。

B: yī-èr:-  yǒu péng zì yuǎn fāng lái, bù yì lè hū.

C: yī-èr:-  yǒu péng zǐ wàn fāng léi, bèi yì lò fū.

D: 1-2:-  Is it not happiness to have friends coming from distant places?

A: 1-3:-  人不知而不慍、不亦君子乎。

B: yī-sān:  rén bù zhī ér bù yùn, bù yì jūn zi hū.

C: yī-sān:  nyíng bèi zi ér bèi wèn , bèi yi gūn zi fū.

D: 1-3:-  Is it not virtue for a man to feel no discomposure when others take no note of him?

為政第二 – wéi zhèng dì èr – Wei zeng di ni – Chapter two

A: 2-2:-  子曰：「詩三百，一言以蔽之，曰：『思無邪』。

B: èr-èr:- zǐ yuē: shī sān bǎi, yī yán yǐ bì zhī , yuē: sī wú xié.

C: èr-èr:-  zǐ wǎ:sī sān bà, yī yán yǐ bì zī, wǎ: sī mǎo xiá.

D: 2-2:-  The Master said: In the Book of Odes there are three hundred poems, but they may be summarized in a single sentence: Think no evil.

A: 2-7:-  子游問孝。子曰：今之孝者，是謂能養。至於犬馬，皆能有養；不敬, 何 以別乎。

B: èr-qī:-  zǐ yóu wèn xiào. zǐ yuē: jīn zhī xiào zhě, shì wèi néng yǎng. zhì wū quǎn mǎ, jiē néng yǒu yǎng; bù jìng, hé yǐ bié hū.

C: : èr-qī:-  zǐyóu wěn xiào.zǐ wǎ: jīn zī xiào zěi,sì wǐ néing yǎng. zì nyú kuǎn mǎ,gāi néing yǒu sē;bèi jìn ,hó yǐpēifū.

D: 2-7:-  Zi You asked what filial piety was. The Master said: Nowadays, providing support for one’s parents is considered filial piety. But dogs and horses can also do this. If there is no respect, what is the difference?

A: 2-10:- 子曰：「視其所以，觀其所由，察其所安。人焉叟哉？人焉叟哉？

B: èr-shí :-  zǐ yuē: shì qí suǒ yǐ , guān qí suǒ yóu, chá qí suǒ ān. rén yān sǒu zāi? rén yān sǒu zāi?

C: èr-shí :-  zǐ wǎ:sì qí sǒ yǐ ,gkuān qí sǒ yóu, cá qí sǒ nān .rying yān sǒu zāi? rying yān sǒu zāi?

D: 2-10:-  The Master said: Watch what a man does. Find out his motives. See how he takes his ease. How then can the man hide his true self? How can the man hide his true self?

Commentary

Located south of the middle reaches of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze) river, Hunan borders Hubei in the north, Jiangxi to the east, Guangdong to the south, Guangxi to the southwest, Guizhou to the west, and Chongqing to the northwest. The name means “south of the lake,” referring to its situation to the south of Lake Dongting. Its official abbreviated name is “Xiang,” after the river that runs through the province.

Originally covered by primeval forests, it does not figure in Chinese history until as late as 350 BCE (Zhou Dynasty, 1046 – 256 BCE), when it was absorbed into the State of Chu. At this time, and for hundreds of years thereafter, it was a magnet for migration of Han Chinese from the north, who cleared most of the forests and began farming rice in the valleys and plains. To this day, many of the small villages in Hunan are named after the Han families who settled there. Migration from the north was especially prevalent during the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317 – 420 CE) and the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420 – 589), when nomadic invaders pushed these peoples south.

Hunan produced an abundance of rice and fed many parts of China with its surpluses. The population continued to climb until, by the nineteenth century, Hunan became overcrowded and prone to peasant uprisings. Some of the uprisings were caused by ethnic tensions like the 10-year Miao people rebellion of 1795-1806. The Taiping Rebellion, which began in Guangxi Province in 1850, spread into Hunan and then farther eastward along the Yangzi River valley. In the end, it was an army from Hunan under Zeng Guofan, who marched into Nanjing to finally put down the uprising in 1864.

Linguistically, the dominant language is Xiang, a subdivision of spoken Chinese, which is spoken by over 36 million people in China, primarily in the central and southwestern parts of Hunan, in about 20 counties of Sichuan province, in four counties of northern Guangxi province, and in parts of Guangdong. It is now classified as consisting of two branches, Old Xiāng and New Xiāng. Old Xiāng dialects are of immense interest because they, along with dialects of Wu Chinese, still exhibit the three-way distinction of Middle Chinese obstruents, preserving the voiced stops, fricatives and affricates. However, Xiāng has been heavily influenced by Mandarin, which adjoins three of the four sides of the Xiāng speaking territory, and New Xiāng, which has lost the voiced obstruents and is to a certain extent intelligible to speakers of Southwestern Mandarin.

The sample’s native dialect, Yueyanghua, is local to her hometown and is a sub-dialect of the New Xiāng language (Chang-Yi).

Very noticeable in this recording are the common /l/ – /r/ and /w/ – /v/ minimal pair substitutions. You will also hear (equally common in Chinese students studying English) the pronunciation of “ai” (e.g., in laid) as the IPA symbol /aɪ/.

COMMENTARY BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/04/2011

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