Is Putian dialect difficult to understand?

Putian dialect is a modified dialect. Xinghua dialect belongs to the Minhai dialect group of the Chinese dialect family. It is one of the ten Chinese dialects in Fujian Province

and occupies a certain position in the entire language system. . Xinghua dialect is commonly known as "Puxian dialect". The characteristics of Xinghua dialect are: its eight tones (including Baiyangru) are distinct, and it preserves more ancient Chinese from the Central Plains before the Tang Dynasty. The fricative voiceless sound (the tip-of-the-tongue sound) in the International Phonetic Alphabet is a unique symbol of the Xinghua dialect. Some people believe that this is the underlying language relic of the ancient Baiyue people.

In addition to Putian County, Xianyou County, Hanjiang District, Chengxiang District, the north shore of Meizhou Bay and Meizhou Island in Putian City, Putian dialect is also distributed in Fuqing , Yongtai, Hui'an and other cities and counties in some villages. After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, many Puxian people traveled across the ocean or moved to other places to make a living. Following their footsteps, the Xinghua dialect was also brought to various places. Xinghua dialect is distributed in places as far away as Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and as close as Xinghua dialect islands are found along the coasts of eastern Fujian and southern Zhejiang.

In Taiwan, there are many places with "Xinghua" in front of their names, such as liaos, langs, pits, houses, and shops. This shows that there is also a shortage of Xinghua dialects in Taiwan today.

traces.

Among the Chinese dialects, especially the Fujian dialects, the Xinghua dialect plays a very important role. This is determined by its voice characteristics

.

Putian dialect is more remarkable than other Chinese dialects in preserving certain characteristics of ancient and medieval Chinese. The edge-rubricated voiceless sound (front tip sound) in the International Phonetic Alphabet

is a unique symbol; Qian Daxin, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, made famous conclusions about ancient pronunciation such as "there were no light labial sounds in ancient times" and "no supraspinal sounds in ancient times". A large number of examples can be found in the Xinghua dialect; in Guanghua Temple There are two stone sutra buildings built in the second year of Zhiping (1065 AD) in the Song Dynasty. They are inscribed in Chinese and Sanskrit.

The pronunciation of "Jia, Jia" in the Chinese-Sanskrit English translation is the same as that in the Xinghua dialect.

Due to the large number of ancient sounds, many people feel that the Xinghua dialect is "easy to speak but not easy to write". Some words seem very "rustic" and cannot be written at all. In fact, this is not the case. Any sentence in Xinghua dialect can be written into words, and every word has its origin

. For example, Puxian people call pig feed such as rice water "Pan". There are two explanations for the word "Pan" on page 377 of "Popular Dictionary" published by Dazhong Bookstore in 1949. One is: Tao rice and swill; the second is: surname. Another example is that in Puxian dialect, adult men are called "hunting", which originates from the fact that in ancient clan societies, men mainly went out to hunt and fish. Puxianhua can even reflect the division of labor among family members in ancient society, and its long history is evident.

The eight tones (including Baiyangru) of Xinghua dialect are distinct. In today's Mandarin, there are only four tones: Yin Ping, Yang Ping, Shang Tone, and Qu Tone, and there is no entering tone. This is because in the evolution of ancient Chinese, the Rusheng characters disappeared in the Yuan Dynasty. However, Puxian dialect

still retains a large number of medieval Chinese tones, forming a complete eight tones. When some people write old-style poems, they can't tell which words are oblique. If you read them in Puxian dialect, you can tell: the syllables are short and cannot lengthen the ending.

Another phonetic feature of Putian dialect is that there is no distinction between front and back nasal sounds, only nasal and coda rhymes; there is no distinction between flat and retroflex sounds

and there are only lingual and dental sounds. Therefore, Puxian people often make jokes when they speak Mandarin.

Putian dialect also has a pronunciation characteristic. The so-called pronunciation change means that the pronunciation of certain characters and words changes

when they are read together with other characters and words. Although other dialects also have this feature, they are far simpler than Puxian dialect. This is also an important reason why Puxian dialect is difficult to learn.

Putian dialect not only preserves a large number of ancient Chinese phonetic sounds, but also preserves a large number of ancient Chinese vocabulary.

Many words that can be seen in ancient books are still used in Puxian dialect, but the pronunciation has changed.

In addition to inheriting a large number of vocabulary from ancient Chinese, Putian dialect also has a more versatile vocabulary than other Chinese dialects

especially verbs. For example: the Putian people's word "beat" can express more than 120 actions with different meanings, and the Xianyou people's word "zhuang" can be used in place of almost all verbs.

Under the impact of Mandarin, Putian dialect will slowly withdraw from history until it becomes extinct. Culture is disappearing again! ! !