A Brief Introduction to Huizhou Dialect

Language family: Sino-Tibetan language family-Chinese-Hui language

Language code: ISO 639-1 zhi

ISO 639-1 chi (b) Zhu (t)

ISO 639-1 czh

Huizhou, now the prefecture-level Huangshan City (except the former Taiping County of huangshan district).

Yanzhou is now Chun 'an and Jiande counties.

Hui language also includes dialects of the old Raozhou prefecture (Dexing county and Fuliang county) in northern Jiangxi province.

There are great differences in the phonetics of Huizhou dialect, which has long been recorded in historical materials. In the 45th year of Jiajing, Huizhou Fuzhi said that "the languages of six cities cannot be connected", and the late linguist Luo Changpei wrote in Several Problems of Huizhou Dialect (23 years of the Republic of China <: World Daily > The article "Mandarin Weekly, No.152" said: "Among the dialects I have studied, Huizhou dialect is complicated enough." He also said: "Before I arrived in Huizhou, I always felt that the difference between townships and counties was just the level of tone, but in reality, not only were there two distinct dialects between counties, but the sounds of townships in a county sometimes had to be divided into two systems." All these historical materials confirm the complexity of Huizhou dialect.

Huizhou dialect retains many grammatical rules and pronunciations of ancient Chinese. It is characterized by softness, relief and cadence. Since ancient times, because Huizhou is located in the mountainous area, the communication between people in various districts and counties is limited, and the pronunciation cannot be unified. The pronunciation of Huizhou language in southern Anhui is very different. Even in a county, people often can't communicate normally in their own emblem language. There is a saying that in a county, some words will have more than a dozen pronunciations. It can be seen how difficult it is to understand emblem language!

Huizhou dialect has some connections with Wu dialect, while the dialects of counties in Huizhou are different from each other. Ming Jiajing's "Huizhou Fuzhi" contains: "The languages of six cities can't be connected, and their dialects are similar unless they are Wu people." Huizhou's topography is dominated by hills and mountains, which is an extremely important factor that causes the "isolated mountain" dialect. In addition, Huizhou is located in the border of Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, and various dialects are easy to penetrate, especially the frequent exchanges between Huizhou merchants, which has brought complex influences to the formation of Huizhou dialects. But after all, Huizhou dialect is a single system of dialect as a whole, and it has its own laws and similarities in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Phonetically, most of them have sharp sounds; Nasal consonant G, interacting with K and X, is the standard root sound of the tongue; There is no "day [z]" mother but "[n]" mother; N rhyme is serious, such as "cat" pronounced as "people" in Xiuning dialect; Qimen dialect "cat" is pronounced "cotton"; The word "cat" in yi county dialect is pronounced as "destiny", which is similar to the word "er" in Putonghua in nature and function, but the difference is the non-rolling tongue sound; There is an entering tone in Huizhou dialect, except for Xiuning dialect, which is similar to Wu dialect, but it is not true. There are many unique dialect words in Huizhou dialect, but there are differences among counties and sources. Some words still use the ancient meaning, such as "first" or "Mr."; "All kinds" are "short and messy beards"; "Nature" means "lucky" and so on. Huizhou dialect has some unique morphemes with grammatical functions, among which "Ren" and "Da Jia" are plural. Some of them have a structural combination, indicating people in a certain aspect, such as "両". Some indicate affiliation, such as "ge". Some unique verbs have many meanings, but they are not ambiguous in sentences. For example, the word "emperor" has the meanings of "to", "to", "to be" and "to be", and how to use it in the sentence is clear at a glance. To indicate action repetition, in addition to adding the adverb "zai" as an adverbial before the predicate, sometimes adding "Tian" at the end of the sentence, such as "eat another bowl of Tian".

historically, Huizhou was under the jurisdiction of six counties. Huizhou dialect actually refers to Shexian dialect, Jixi dialect, Xiuning dialect, yi county dialect, Qimen dialect and Wuyuan dialect. As for Jingde County, Taiping County and shitai county, which were placed in Huizhou after liberation, most of their languages belong to Jianghuai Mandarin, and they are generally not included in Huizhou dialect. Because Shexian county has been ruled by the state and the county for a long time in history, it governs the whole of Huizhou, so the so-called Huizhou dialect should be represented by Shexian dialect. However, during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period, coastal areas and foreigners moved into Tunxi in succession, so the population of Tunxi surged, and it was once called "little shanghai". After liberation, Tunxi has long been the regional seat and the political, economic and cultural center of Huizhou, but the transition between Tunxi dialect and other regional dialects is very poor. Tunxi dialect is a hybrid of northern dialect and local dialect, while other regional dialects in Huizhou have not changed much, so Tunxi dialect can not be regarded as the representative of Huizhou dialect now.

However, it is worth mentioning that people born in Hui-speaking areas who use Hui as their first mother tongue have a strong sense of identity and belonging to their hometown and language, and the language is extremely difficult to assimilate, which will probably only happen when there is a large-scale influx of migrants like Tunxi.