Lower Yangtze Mandarin

Lower Yangtze Mandarin
Xiajiang Guanhua
Region	Huai and Yangzi Rivers (Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei, Jiangxi, Henan)
Native speakers	ca. 70 million (2011)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Mandarin Lower Yangtze Mandarin
Writing system	Written vernacular Chinese
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
ISO 639-6	juai
Glottolog	jing1262
Areas where Jianghuai is spoken

Lower Yangtze Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 下江官话; traditional Chinese: 下江官話; pinyin: xiàjiāng guānhuà) is one of the most divergent groups of Mandarin dialects, as it neighbors the Wu, Hui, and Gan groups of Chinese varieties. It is also known as Jiang–Huai Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 江淮官话; traditional Chinese: 江淮官話; pinyin: jiānghuái guānhuà), after the Yangtze (Jiang) and Huai Rivers. Lower Yangtze dialects are distinguished from most other Mandarin varieties by their retention of a final glottal stop in words that ended in a final stop in Middle Chinese.

Features and location

Sixty-seven million people speak Jianghuai Mandarin. Some features of Jianghuai Mandarin include retention of Middle Chinese syllable-final stops.

The Portuguese Chinese Dictionary (PCD) written by missionaries during the Ming dynasty categorized several Jianghuai dialects with rounded finals. The eastern and southeastern variants of Jianghuai contain these rounded finals, Nanjing dialect, on the other hand, is located in another group.

Lower Yangtze Mandarin is spoken in parts of Anhui and Hubei provinces north of the Yangtze, as well as some areas of Jiangsu north of the river, most notably in the former capital of Nanjing, as well as Jiujiang in Jiangxi province. It is one of the few Mandarin dialects to retain the entering tone (ru sheng 入聲) of Middle Chinese (as a final glottal stop) like Jin Chinese, and for this retention of the entering tone Jianghuai is compared to its non-Mandarin neighbors to the south. The retension of the entering tone is considered a unique feature of Jianghuai which sets it apart from other the other Mandarin dialects. It has largely lost initial n, replacing it with l.

Some Jianghuai dialects have five tones due to the preservation of the rù tone of Middle Chinese, more than four toned Standard Mandarin which lost the rù tone.

In Jianghuai, verbs which meant "to share, to gather, to mix, to accompany" gave rise to disposal markers which mean "and, with" similar to 跟 gen.

Jiangsu province contains the border in which Jianghuai and Northern Mandarin are split.

Jianghuai Mandarin shares some characteristics with Ming dynasty Southern Mandarin.

Peking opera got its start in parts of Anhui and Hubei which spoke this dialect.

Literary and colloquial readings

The existence of literary and colloquial readings (文白异读), is a notable feature in Jianghuai Mandarin.

Example	Colloquial reading	Literary reading	Meaning	Standard Mandarin pronunciation
斜	tɕia	tɕiɪ	oblique	ɕiɛ
摘	tiɪʔ	tsəʔ	pick	tʂai
去	kʰɪ	tɕʰy	go	tɕʰy
锯	ka	tɕy	cut	tɕy
下	xa	ɕia	down	ɕia
横	xoŋ	xən	across	xəŋ
严	æ̃	iɪ̃	strict	ian
挂	kʰuɛ	kua	hang	kua
蹲	sən	tən	crouch	tuən
虹	kaŋ	xoŋ	rainbow	xoŋ

Relations to other dialects

A linguist named Cheng evaluated the extent of relationship between dialects by using Pearson's correlation coefficients. The result was that Eastern dialects of Jianghuai "cluster", with the Xiang and Gan dialects when using a 35 world list, while Northern and Southern Mandarin were nowhere in the cluster with Eastern Jianghuai, while Northern and Southern were supposedly "genetic" relatives of Jianghuai Mandarin.

Jianghuai originally included the Huizhou dialect, but it is currently classified separately from Jianghuai.

Jianghuai Mandarin shares an "old literary layer" as a stratum with southern varieties like Southern Min, Hakka, Gan, and Hangzhou dialects, which it does not share with Northern Mandarin. Sino-Vietnamese also shares some of these characteristics. The stratum in Minnan specifically consist of Zeng group and Geng group's "n" and "t" finals when an "i" initial is present.

A professor of Chinese at Rutgers University, Richard Vanness Simmons, claims that the Hangzhou dialect, rather than being Wu as it was classified by Yuen Ren Chao, is a Mandarin dialect closely related to Jianghuai Mandarin. The Hangzhou dialect is still classified under Wu. Chao had developed a "Common Wu Syllabary" for the Wu dialects. Simmons claimed that, had Chao compared the Hangzhou dialect to the Wu syllabary and Jianghuai Mandarin, he would have found more similarities to Jianghuai.

Some works of literature produced in Yangzhou, such as Qingfengzha, a novel, contain Jianghuai Mandarin. People in Yangzhou identified by the dialect they speak, locals spoke the dialect, as opposed to sojourners, who spoke Huizhou or Wu dialects. This led to the formation of identity based on dialect. Large amounts of merchants from Huizhou lived in Yangzhou and effectively were responsible for keeping the town afloat.

67 million people speak Jianghuai Mandarin. Some features of Jianghua Mandarin include retention of Middle Chinese syllable final stops. Like Wu, the glottal stop has superseded the original Middle Chinese p, t, k, and three-way place contrast has also gone extinct.

Some Chinese linguists like Ting have claimed that Jianghuai is mostly Wu containing a superstratum of Mandarin.

The linguist Dan Xu suggested that Jianghuai Mandarin is an intermediary with Standard Mandarin and Wu regarding the occurrence of postpositions in Chinese.

The Chinese Academy of Social Science was behind the separation of the Hui dialects from the Jianghuai Mandarin dialects in 1987.

Hefei, and other Jianghuai Mandarin dialects, along with Taiyuan and other Jin dialects has gone through the process of a glottal stop replacing consonant endings. While most Mandarin dialects and the Wenzhou dialect have completely dropped Middle Chinese stop endings such as p, t, k, Jianghuai Mandarin, Jin, and Wu dialect converted them into a glottal stop. Having a single entering tone with a glottal stop is shared by Jin, Mandarin, and Wu.

Vocalic distinctions are more common in Jianghuai Mandarin than the Jin Chinese.

The linguist Matthew Y. Chen noted that since the CVq syllables which are related to Middle Chinese ton IV are preserved in Jianghuai Mandarin that splitting Jin Chines from Mandarin on the basis that Middle Chinese tone IV was preserved in Jin made no sense. He did note that there was a separate reason to split Jin from Northern Mandarin, since it has a unique tone sandhi.

When Jianghuai Mandarin and Wu were compared to dialects from China's southeastern coast, it was concluded "that chain-type shifts in Chinese follow the same general rules as have been revealed by Labov for American and British English dialects."

Comparison to other Mandarin dialects

Jianghuai (eastern) Mandarin and Northern Mandarin do not share many words; frequently many Jianghuai Mandarin words have no Northern Mandarin cognates, besides cognates that do exist between the two Mandarins have multiple forms.

The Rugaohua dialect of Jianghuai does not follow the T3 sandhi rule which most other Mandarin dialects follow, with T3 being absent from it. Linguists speculate that the Beijing dialect also eliminated T3 sandhi, but it was resurrected for modern Standard Mandarin (Putonghua).

Nanjing Jianghuai Mandarin has preserved the glottal stop as a final and separates the entering tone unlike the Northern Mandarin or Southwestern Mandarin. Like Northern Mandarin, it keeps the retroflex initials. In Jianghuai Mandarin, the n sound does not exist, being pronounced as L; the opposite occurred in Southwestern Mandarin, where now only the n sound is present while L merged into it. Northern Mandarin on the other hand, keeps both n and L separate. Jianghuai, like Northern Mandarin, also separates the F and X sound in "xu", while in Southwestern Mandarin, X merged into f so that it is pronounced as "fu". In Jianghuai, əŋ has "merged" into iŋ, while the opposite has occurred in Southwestern Mandarin, Northern Mandarin keeps both as separate sounds.

The two finals, [ŋ] and [n] are the only ones that exist in dialects of Mandarin. The final stops merged into a glottal stop in Jianghuai Mandarin, while in the majority of southwestern Mandarin they are completely eliminated, Northern and Northwest Mandarin dialects have undergone both changes. Nanjing Mandarin is an exception to the normal occurrence of the [i], [y] and [u] medials in Mandarin, along with is eastern Shanxi and some Southwest Mandarin dialects.

Verbs meaning giving function as a passive agent marker or a disposal construction direct object marker in the Zhongyuan, Jianghuai, and southwestern Mandarin. This is also shared by the grammatization of gei (给) in Standard Mandarin, since all four are Mandarin dialects.

When Chinese people were subjected to listening to various dialects such as a Northern Mandarin dialect (Yantai dialect), Standard Mandarin (Putonghua), and a Jianghuai Mandarin dialect (Rugao dialect of Jiangsu), "cross dialectal" differences appeared in their reactions.

Prominence

Jianghuai Mandarin was possibly the native tone of the founding Emperor of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang and many of his military and civil officials.

The "Guanhua koine" of the early Ming era was based on Jianghuai Guanhua (Jianghuai Mandarin). Western missionaries and Korean Hangul writings of the Ming Guanhua and Nanjing dialect showed differences, which pointed to the Guanhua being a koiné and mixture of various dialects strongly based on Jianghuai.

In Matteo Ricci's "Dicionário Português-Chinês", words in this dictionary documenteed the Ming dynasty Mandarin. A number of words appeared to be derived from Jianghuai Mandarin dialect, such as "pear, jujube, shirt, ax, hoe, joyful, to speak, to bargain, to know, to urinate, to build a house, busy, and not yet."

Some linguists have studied the influence which Nanjing Jianghuai Mandarin had on Ming dynasty guanhua/Mandarin. Although the early Ming dynasty Mandarin/Guanhua was a koiné based on the Nanjing dialect, it was not entirely identical to it, with some non-Jianghuai characteristics being found in it. Francisco Varo advised that, to learn Chinese, one must acquire it from "Not just any Chinese, but only those who have the natural gift of speaking the Mandarin language well, such as those natives of the Province of Nan king, and of other provinces where the Mandarin tongue is spoken well.

Jianghuai Mandarin, along with Northern Mandarin, formed the standard for Baihua before and during the Qing dynasty up until its replacement by modern Standard Mandarin. This Baihua was used by writers all over China, regardless of the dialect they spoke. Chinese writers who spoke other dialects had to use the grammar and vocabulary of Jianghuai and Northern Mandarin in order for the majority of Chinese to understand their writing. By contrast, Chinese who did not speak southern dialects would not be able to understand a Southern dialect's writing.

Jianghuai also influenced the Beijing dialect. The Beijing dialect was not only influenced by various northern dialects, but also from Jianghuai.

Dialect has also been used as a tool for regional identitity and politics in the Jiangbei and Jiangnan regions. While the city of Yangzhou was the center of trade, flourishing and prosperous, it was considered part of Jiangnan, which was known to be wealthy, even though Yangzhou was north of the Yangzi river. Once Yangzhou's wealth and prosperity were gone, it was then considered to be part of Jiangbei, the "backwater". After Yangzhou was removed from Jiangnan, its residents decided to no longer speak Jianghuai Mandarin, which was the dialect of Yangzhou. They instead replaced Mandarin with Wu and spoke Taihu Wu dialects. In Jiangnan itself, multiple dialects of Wu fought for the position of prestige dialect.

History of expansion

Evidence from the Eastern Han dynasty period suggests the southern dialects included Jianghuai.

During the Han dynasty, Old Chinese was divided into dialects, one of them was called "Chǔ-Jiāng-huái", 憐 lián meant "to love" in this dialect.

The original dialect of Nanjing was the Wu dialect in the Eastern Jin. After the Wu Hu uprising, the Jin Emperor and many northern Chinese fled south. The new capital of Eastern Jin was created at Jiankang, where modern day Nanjing is today. It was during this time that the Nanjing dialect started to transform into Jianghuai Mandarin from Wu. Further events, such as Hou Jing's rebellions during the Liang dynasty and the Sui dynasty invasion of the Chen dynasty resulted in Jiankang's destruction. During the Ming dynasty, Ming Taizu relocated southerners from below Yangzi and made Nanjing the capital. During the Taiping Rebellion, Taiping rebels seized Nanjing and made it the capital of the Taiping Kingdom. The fighting resulted in the loss of the population of Nanjing. These events all played in role in forming the Nanjing dialect of today.

Immigrants from Northern China during the middle of the Song dynasty moved south, bringing a speech type from which Northern Wu and Jianghuai reading patterns both derive from, these northern immigrants almost totally took over from the original inhabitants on the Yangtze's northern bank. Jiang-huai, like other dialects of Chinese has two forms for pronouncing words, the Bai (common, vulgar), and the Wen (literary), the Bai forms appear to preserve more ancient forms of speech dating from before the mass migration in the Song dynasty which brought in the wen pronunciations.

During the Ming dynasty, Wu speakers moved into Jianghuai-speaking regions, influencing the Tairu and Tongtai dialects of Jianghuai.

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Jianghuai speakers moved into Hui dialect areas.

Jianghuai Mandarin is currently overtaking Wu as the language variety of multiple counties in Jiangsu. An example of this is Zaicheng Town in Lishui County, both Jianghuai and Wu were spoken in several towns in Lishui, with Wu being spoken by the greater amount of people in more towns than Jianghuai. Wu is called "old Zaicheng Speech", while Jianghuai dialect is called "new Zaicheng speech", with Wu being driven rapidly to extinction. Only old people use it to talk to relatives. The Jianghuai dialect was present there for about a century, even though all the surrounding areas around the town are Wu speaking. Jianghuai was always confined inside the town itself until the 1960s, in the present it is overtaking Wu.

Subdialects

It is divided into three main branches, with several subbranches:

• Hongchao dialects 洪巢片
  The largest and most widespread branch of Jianghuai Mandarin, mostly concentrated in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, with smaller minorities in Zhejiang province. It is divided into the Western Huai dialects and the Eastern Huai dialects, with the Western Huai dialects being the more numerous of the two.
  • Western Huai dialects 淮西話, also known as Linglu dialects 寧廬方言
    • Hefei dialect 合肥話
    • Nanjing dialect 南京話
  • Eastern Huai dialects 淮東話
    • Yangzhou dialect 揚州話
    • Zhenjiang dialect 鎮江話
• Tong-Tai dialects 通泰片, also known as Tairu dialect 泰如片
  Mostly spoken in the area from southern Yancheng to northern Nantong cities in Jiangsu province.
  • Nantong dialect 南通話
• Huangxiao dialects 黃孝片
  Mostly spoken in eastern Hubei province and northern Jiangxi, particularly the area around Jiujiang.
  • Xiaogan dialect 孝感話
• Isolates
  • Junjiahua 軍家話 - A variety of Jianghuai Mandarin brought to Hainan and the rest of coastal Southeastern China during the Ming dynasty by soldiers from Jiangsu, Anhui and Henan during the reign of Hongwu Emperor. Mostly spoken in small pockets throughout Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan and Fujian provinces.

Of unclear placement in the classification above:

The Wuchang, Wuhan, and Tianmen dialects are spoken around the Chang-jiang lakes.

Taixing dialect. Taixing dialect uses the character "na" for "disposal construction".

Anqing dialect.

Tongcheng dialect (桐城话)

"Tongdao, Ningyuan, Longshan, Yizhang, Zhijiang" are also all Jianghuai Mandarin dialects.