Shanghainese

Initials

Shanghai dialect has a set of voiced initials and exhibits unvoiced unaspirated and aspirated stops. Moreover, there are unvoiced and voiced fricatives sets. Palatized initials also feature in Shanghai dialect. The consonant is also particular in that there is a slight flapping of the tongue during speech, somewhat similar to the Japanese r (although lateral and not post-alveolar). The sound may be made by lightly placing the tongue on the back of the upper set of teeth. However this flapping is not present when each character is individually pronounced.

Rimes

The Middle Chinese ending rimes in Shanghai dialect have merged with , some of which subsequently dropped off. Some Middle Chinese ending rime characters have become rimes with a nasalised ending, . Middle Chinese rimes have become glottal stops .

In certain variants, the is pronounced unrounded (close back unrounded, ).

Tones

The Yang Shu tone is composed of Yang registers of the Ping, Shang and Qu tone characters. The Yin Ru and Yang Ru tones are abrupt tones, and apply only to those rimes in Shanghai dialect, which end in the glottal stop [ ʔ ]. The Yin Shang tone (/55/) is not common in today's variants of the Shanghai dialect, having merged into the Yin Qu tone. If the Ru tone and tones automatically related to the voiced initials (b d g z v dʑ ʑ) are not considered (as they are fixed into the syllabic structure), then the Shanghai dialect has only 2 live tonal contrasts (/53/ and /34/). This makes it especially unique amongst Chinese dialects.

Advanced tone sandhi and argument for pitch accent classification:

1st syllable original tone	2 syllables	3 syllables	4 syllables	5 syllables
53	55 - 21	55 - 33 - 31	55 - 33 - 33 - 31	55 - 33 - 33 - 33 - 31
	H - L	H - L - L	H - L - L - L	H - L - L - L - L
34	33 - 44	33 - 55 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
	L - H	L - H - L	L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L
13	22 - 44	22 - 55 - 31	22 - 55 - 33 - 31	22 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
	L - H	L - H - L	L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L
5	33 - 44	33 - 55 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
	L - H	L - H - L	L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L
2	11 - 23	11 - 22 - 23	11 - 22 - 22 - 23 or 22 - 55 - 33 - 31 depending on word	22 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
	L - H	L - H - H	L - H - H - H or L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L

H = relative high pitch; L = relative low pitch

Notice that these patterns are quite similar to Japanese pitch accent patterns. Tone sandhi of polysyllabic compounds in the Shanghai dialect has attracted the interest of many scholars, who have previously given only careful consideration to the tone of the monosyllable while trying to describe the rules of tone sandhi for polysyllabic compounds. It has been argued that the number of tones of the Shanghai dialect, generally held to be five under previous analyses, can be reduced to only two underlying tone patterns, or tonemes, by recognizing the existence of the phoneme "voiced h" (Xiaowen Shen, University of Tokyo).

References

See also

Romanization

Initials

Rimes

Glottal Stop “q” can be replaced by double writing the following consonantal letter except for”m,n,h”.

There shall be only one of the vocalic letters (A,E,I,O,U) in one monosyllable,as there are no true diphthongal syllables in Shanghai dialect.

Rimes "UYN", "UYQ" can be shortened by "YN", "YQ".

Tones

The short high tone is only used in a monosyllable or the last syllable of a polysyllable. Long or short low tones are almost the same. Light low tone is always used in a polysyllable.

This romanisation was designed by LI Hui, Center for Anthropological Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

External links