Wenchang dialect

Wenchang dialect
	文昌话
Native to	Southern China
Region	Wenchang, Hainan
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Min Hainanese Wenchang dialect; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
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Wenchang dialect (simplified Chinese: 文昌话; traditional Chinese: 文昌話; pinyin: Wénchāng huà) is a dialect of Hainanese which spoken in Wenchang, a county-level city in the northeast of Hainan, an island province in southern China. It is considered the prestige form of Hainanese, and is used by the provincial broadcasting media.

Phonology

The initials of the Wenchang dialect are:^[1]

		Bilabial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop / Affricate	voiceless		t	tɕ	k	ʔ
	voiced implosive	ɓ	ɗ
	voiced	b	d	dʑ	g
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Fricative	voiceless	ɸ		ɕ		h
Fricative	voiced	(w)		(j)		ɦ
Lateral			l

The semivowels [w] and [j] are in complementary distribution with [ɦ], and may be treated as allophones of the same phoneme.^[2]

There are five vowels, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/ and /a/.^[3] The high vowels /i/ and /u/ may also occur as medials.^[4]

The possible finals are:^[5]

There are also two syllabic nasals, /m̩/ and /ŋ̍/, which occur in a total of three words.^[6]

Wenchang dialect has six tones on isolated syllabes:^[7]

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