Jiangsu 36

Listen to Jiangsu 36, a 20-year-old woman from Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, China. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/11/1989

PLACE OF BIRTH: Taizhou, Jiangsu Province

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Han Chinese

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: university

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

Subject spent time in Suzhou, which is also in Jiangsu Province.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject had a number of native English speakers as teachers in her high school.

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): 14/05/2010

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I’d like to introduce my hometown. I came from Taizhou in Jiangsu Province. It’s a beautiful city with a lot of, ah, in – interesting places, for example, such as, ah, Mei Ting and, ahm, Lao Jie, and our greatest dramatist called Méi Lánfāng is also born in Taizhou. Ah, Mei Ting is his, ah, previous home. And we have many specialties called, ah, Ma You, Ma Gong, Ma Bing, and, ah, they are very delicious. Now we also have a lot of historical buildings such as Ba Bao, Guang Hai Lou; and my hometown is, ah, my hometown has many fam – famous education schools such as, ah, Xue Tai Zhong, which our president Hu Jintao graduated from it. So that’s all. That’s my hometown. [The subject now goes on to read abstracts from the Analects of Confucius in her own Taizhouhua dialect. (See the detailed commentary below.) This is a nice idiomatic reading, but she has not provided a pinyin transliteration. A reading in Putonghua (Mandarin) can be heard on the Hebei 1 sample.]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/07/2013

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

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

孔子: 论语 – Kǒng zǐ : lún yǔ – Kon zi: len yu – Confucius: Lun Yu

 

學而第一 – xué ér dì yī – Xué ér dì yī – 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 :-

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:-

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:

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 – wéi zhèng dì ér – 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:-

D: 2-2:-       The Master said: In the Book of Odes there are three hundred poems, but they may be summarised 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:-

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 :-

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

This is a fairly strong accent with no real evidence of accent reduction. She has retained some of the characteristics found in the English of Chinese speakers, notably the /v/ and /w/ minimal pair transition and the failure to pronounce the final /s/ in words such as goose’s.

The subject’s dialect, Taizhouhua, belongs to the Tong-Tai, or Tai-Ru, dialect group. This is a sub-dialect of Jianghuai Mandarin and is confined to the middle-east coastal area of Jiangsu Northern Plain. It takes its names from the three landward cities that more or less define the area: Tongzhou in the west, Taizhou in the north, and Rugao/Rudong in the south.

Geographically, this linguistic area is situated to the north of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze) River and to the east of the Beijing-Hangzhou (Grand) Canal and covers an area of 15,000 square kilometres (5,800 square miles). It is estimated that about 11.4 million people speak the dialects in this group.

Linguistically, the area can be subdivided into three vernacular regions – west which includes Taizhouhua, and middle and east, which are distinguished by differences in the use of the /l/, /n/, and /r/ consonants; compare, for example, “ren” and “len” in the two pinyin versions of the 2.10 Analect in this Reading and that in the Jiangsu 33 sample. Another major feature of these dialects is that they do not follow the T3 sandhi rule, which most other Mandarin dialects follow. Mandarin has four tones, the third of which is a falling-rising tone. The T3 sandhi rule states that when a tone 3 occurs before another tone 3, it changes into tone 2, a rising tone. When it occurs before any of the other tones, it is pronounced as a low falling tone without a rise at the end.

All of this linguistic area used to be part of, or heavily influenced by, the Wu culture of south Jiangsu, and there is, therefore, a marked preservation of aspects of the Wu dialects in these vernacular regions.

The subject’s hometown is Taizhou, on the north bank of the Chang Jiang (Yangtse river). The city has a long history. It was known as Hǎiyán during the Spring and Autumn Period (722-476 BCE) and Hǎilíng during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 9 CE). During the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-e420 CE), it was equal in status to Jinling (Nanjing) and Guangling (Lanzhou). It finally became Taizhou during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE). During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 CE), the salt trade was centred here, and Taizhou was the home of many wealthy salt merchants. Two of its most famous sons are President Hu Jintao and Mei Méi Lánfāng, perhaps the most famous exponent of Peking Opera in the 20th century.

COMMENTARY BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/07/2013

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