Pinghua may also refer to a dialect of
Min Dong which is spoken in
Fujian.
Pinghua (simplified Chinese: 平话; traditional Chinese: 平話 Pínghuà, sometimes disambiguated as 廣西平話/广西平话 Guǎngxī Pínghuà) is a variety of Chinese, spoken mainly in parts of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, with some speakers in Hunan province. Pinghua is a trade language in some areas of Guangxi, where it is spoken as a second language by speakers of Zhuang. Some speakers of Pinghua are officially classified as Zhuang, while many are genetically distinct from the Han majority of Chinese speakers.[1] The northern sub-dialect of Pinghua is centered around Guilin and the southern sub-dialect around Nanning. Pinghua has several notable features. It retains the four entering tones of ancient Chinese as closed syllables. Pinghua uses various loan words from Zhuang, such as the final particle "wei" for imperative sentences.
History
Language surveys in Guangxi during the 1950s noted a lect of Chinese different from those in Guangdong that was previously designated by default as a subdivision of Yue. Pinghua was designated as a separate dialect from Cantonese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in the 1980s [2] and since then has been treated as a separate dialect in textbooks and surveys. However, Pinghua is not at present noted separately in Ethnologue.[3] Since designation as a separate dialect there has been increased research into Pinghua. In 2008 a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences of research into Chinese dialects noted an increase in research papers and surveys of Pinghua, from 7 before the publication of the revised Chinese dialect map in 1987, and about 156 between then and 2004 [4].
In the 1980s the number of speakers was listed as over 2 million[5].
Phonology
Pinghua makes use of the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (IPA ɬ)[6], for example in the numbers "three" and "four" which are pronounced ɬam and ɬi respectively. This is unlike Cantonese but like some other Yue dialects such as Taishanese.
Tones
Pinghua has 6 phonemic tones, reduced to 4 entering tones before stop consonants, and as with all Chinese dialects there is regional variation of pitch in these tones. The table below shows the tones for Nanning Pinghua[7].
| 陰平 |
陽平 |
陰上 |
陽上 |
陰去 |
陽去 |
上陰入 |
上陽入 |
下陰入 |
下陽入 |
| 53 |
21 |
33 |
24 |
55 |
22 |
5 |
23 |
3 |
2 |
Anthropological
Genetically speaking Pinghua speakers have more in common with non-Han ethnic minorities in southern China than with other Han groups.[1]
References
External links
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