2 Liyang dialect

There are many types of dialects in Jiangsu Province. If a person travels dozens of miles, he may not understand what the people there are saying. He can only say "ah ho" and touch his feet (in Liyang dialect, it means confused).

It is recorded in the Bible that once the whole world spoke the same language, and people worked together to build the Tower of Babel that reached the sky. When God knew this, he was angry and worried, so he used his divine power to make humans speak various languages. From then on, people could not communicate and understand each other, and they began to quarrel endlessly. The construction of the Tower of Babel naturally ended without any problem. From this point of view, it is understandable that Jiangsu is known as a province prone to internal strife. After all, there are too many dialects.

Taking Changzhou as an example, the dialects in Changzhou urban area, Jintan, and Liyang are very different, and can even be said to be incomprehensible to each other. People in Liyang are generally reluctant to say that they are from Changzhou. This is not because they are arrogant, but because of the differences in language and culture.

Although Liyang dialect also belongs to the Wu dialect family, it sounds very tough, which is far from the "soft Wu Nong dialect" like Suzhou dialect. There is a joke: "People in Suzhou quarrel like talking, and people in Liyang talk like quarreling." I have also heard people say that Liyang dialect sounds like Japanese or Russian. "What are you doing" in Mandarin is transliterated as "walk the first" in Liyang dialect. I think it is very similar to "What are you looking at" in Northeastern dialect - both make you feel like you are about to roll up your sleeves and fight in the next second. However, people in Liyang rarely take action. Maybe scolding in Liyang dialect is enough to relieve their anger, and there is no need to fight at all. Therefore, the small town is always peaceful.

When I first came to Liyang to go to kindergarten, I quickly learned to speak Liyang dialect fluently. In addition, my father is from Jintan and my mother is from Nanjing. I can also speak Jintan dialect and Nanjing dialect. Unexpectedly, the peak period of my language mastery was at the age of 3! As the kindergarten teacher taught us to "speak Mandarin", good children like me actually threw away all dialects! It's a pity that I can only understand but not speak. Sometimes when I communicate with people in Liyang, I will speak Mandarin and the other person will speak Liyang dialect. It seems like a chicken talking to a duck, but communication is not hindered, which is interesting.

When I was in high school, I tried to learn Liyang dialect, but in the end I could only speak words and short sentences, not long conversations. After that, I went to college elsewhere, and I heard less about Liyang.

I am probably a fake Liyang person.

However, I still like Liyang dialect.