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Teochew or Chaozhou (, , , Teochew
endonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...
: , Shantou dialect: ) is a dialect of Chaoshan Min, a
Southern Min Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwa ...
language, that is spoken by the
Teochew people The Teochew people or Chaoshan people (rendered Têo-Swa in romanized Teoswa and Chaoshan in Standard Chinese also known as Teo-Swa in mainland China due to a change in place names) is anyone native to the historical Chaoshan region in south ...
in the Chaoshan region of eastern
Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020 ...
and by their diaspora around the world. It is sometimes referred to as ''Chiuchow'', its
Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding a ...
rendering, due to the English romanisation by colonial officials and explorers. It is closely related to some dialects of
Hokkien The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages ...
, as it shares some
cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical ef ...
s and phonology with Hokkien. The two are mutually unintelligible, but it is possible to understand some words. Teochew preserves many
Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 12 ...
pronunciations and vocabulary that have been lost in some of the other modern
varieties of Chinese Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of mai ...
. As such, Teochew is described as one of the most conservative Chinese languages.


Languages in contact


Mandarin

In China, Teochew children are introduced to Standard Chinese as early as in kindergarten; however, the Teochew language remains the primary medium of instruction. In the early years of primary education, Mandarin becomes the sole language of instruction, but students typically continue to speak to one another in Teochew. Mandarin in widely understood by the Teochew youth, but the elderly may have difficulty with Mandarin due to growing up speaking Teochew.


Chaozhou accent in Mandarin

Native Teochew-speakers find the neutral tone in Mandarin the most difficult tone to master. Teochew has lost the
alveolar nasal The voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol ...
ending and so Teochew-speakers often replace it with the velar nasal when they speak Mandarin. The southern Min dialects all have no front rounded vowel and so a typical Teochew accent supplants the unrounded counterpart for . Teochew, like its ancient ancestor, lacks labio-dentals and so its speakers use or instead of when they speak Mandarin. Teochew has no retroflex consonants in its northern dialects and so , , , and replace , , and in the Teochew accent in Mandarin.


Hakka

Since Chao'an, Raoping, and Jieyang border the Hakka-speaking region in the north, some people there speak Hakka but they can usually speak Teochew as well. Teochew people have historically had a great deal of contact with the Hakka people, but Hakka has had little, if any, influence on Teochew. Similarly, in Dabu and Fengshun, where the Teochew- and the Hakka-speaking regions meet, Teochew is also spoken, but Hakka remains the primary form of Chinese spoken there.


Cantonese

Because of the strong influence of Hong Kong soap operas, Guangdong provincial television programs and Cantonese pop songs, many young Chaoshan peoples can understand quite a lot of Cantonese even if they cannot speak it with much fluency.


Hmong-Mien languages

In the mountainous area of Fenghuang (), the She language, an endangered Hmong–Mien language, is spoken by the
She people The She people (; Shehua: ; Cantonese: , Fuzhou: ) are an ethnic group in China. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. The She are the largest ethnic minority in Fujian, Zhejiang, and J ...
, who are an officially recognised non-Han ethnic minority. They predominantly speak Hakka ( Shehua) and Teochew; only about 1,000 She still speak their eponymous language.


Thai

The majority of
Thai Chinese Thai Chinese (also known as Chinese Thais, Sino-Thais), Thais of Chinese origin ( th, ชาวไทยเชื้อสายจีน; ''exonym and also domestically''), endonym Thai people ( th, ชาวไทย), are Chinese descenda ...
are Teochew; Teochew is known to have provided a number of loanwords into Thai: .


Khmer (Cambodian)

The majority of Chinese Cambodians are Teochew; Teochew is known to have provided a number of loanwords into Khmer. Cambodian Teochew also incorporates a number of loanwords from Khmer, including a function word ''pi'' ().


Phonetics and phonology


Consonants

Teochew, like other Southern Min varieties, is one of the few modern Sinitic languages which have voiced
obstruent An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...
s (stops, fricatives and affricates); however, unlike Wu and
Xiang Chinese Xiang or Hsiang (; ); Changsha Xiang: ''sian1 y3'', also known as Hunanese (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages, spoken mainly in Hunan province but also in northern Guangxi and parts of neighbori ...
, the Teochew voiced stops and fricatives did not evolve from
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
voiced obstruents, but from nasals. The voiced stops and and also are voicelessly
prenasalised Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rath ...
, , , respectively. The voiced affricate , initial in such words as 字 (dzi˩), 二 (dzi˧˥), 然 (dziaŋ˥), 若 (dziak˦) loses its affricate property with some younger speakers abroad, and is relaxed to Southern Min dialects and varieties are typified by a lack of labiodentals, as illustrated below:


Syllable

Syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...
s in Teochew contain an onset consonant, a medial glide, a nucleus, usually in the form of a
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...
, but can also be occupied by a
syllabic consonant A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacrit ...
like and a final
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...
. All the elements of the syllable except for the nucleus are optional, which means a vowel or a syllabic consonant alone can stand as a fully-fledged syllable.


Onsets

All the consonants except for the glottal stop ʔ shown in the consonants chart above can act as the onset of a syllable; however, the onset position is not obligatorily occupied.


Finals

Teochew finals consist maximally of a medial, nucleus and coda. The medial can be i or u, the nucleus can be a monophthong or diphthong, and the coda can be a nasal or a stop. A syllable must consist minimally of a vowel nucleus or syllabic nasal.


Tones


Citation tones

Teochew, like other Chinese varieties, is a
tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
. It has a set of eight distinct sounds, but only six of them are considered unique tones. This discrepancy occurs because two of the eight sounds are reduced to stopped syllables, despite already sharing the same pitch as the six main tones. Additionally, depending on the position of a word in a phrase, the tones can change and adopt extensive tone sandhi. : As with sandhi in other Min Nan dialects, the checked tones interchange. The ''yang'' tones all become low. Sandhi is not accounted for in the description below.


Grammar

The
grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...
of Teochew is similar to other Min languages, as well as some southern
varieties of Chinese Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of mai ...
, especially with
Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...
, Yue and Wu. The sequence ' subject–verb–object' is typical, like
Standard Mandarin Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standa ...
, although the ' subject–object–verb' form is also possible using particles.


Morphology


Pronouns


= Personal pronouns

= The personal pronouns in Teochew, like in other Chinese languages, do not show case marking, therefore means both ''I'' and ''me'' and means ''they'' and ''them''. The southern Min dialects, like some northern dialects, have a distinction between an inclusive and exclusive we, meaning that when the addressee is being included, the inclusive pronoun would be used, otherwise is employed. Outside Southern Min varieties like Teochew, no other southern Chinese variety has this distinction.


= Possessive pronouns

= Teochew does not distinguish the possessive pronouns from the possessive adjectives. As a general rule, the possessive pronouns or adjectives are formed by adding the
genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...
or possessive marker ai5to their respective personal pronouns, as summarised below: As is the generic measure word, it may be replaced by other more appropriate classifiers:


= Demonstrative pronouns

= Teochew has the typical two-way distinction between the demonstratives, namely the proximals and the distals, as summarised in the following chart:


= Interrogative pronouns

=


Numerals

Note: (T): Traditional characters; (S): Simplified characters. Ordinal numbers are formed by adding in front of a cardinal number.


= Voice

= In Teochew passive construction, the
agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
phrase ''by somebody'' always has to be present, and is introduced by either (some speakers use or instead) or , even though it is in fact a zero or indefinite agent as in: While in Mandarin one can have the agent introducer or alone without the agent itself, it is not grammatical to say :: cf. Mandarin ) Instead, we have to say: Even though this is unknown. The agent phrase always comes immediately after the subject, not at the end of the sentence or between the auxiliary and the past
participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
like in some European languages (e.g.
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
, Dutch)


Comparison


=Comparative construction with two or more nouns

= Teochew uses the construction "X ADJ Y", which is believed to have evolved from the
Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 12 ...
"X ADJ (yú) Y" structure to express the idea of comparison: Cantonese uses the same construction: However, due to modern influences from Mandarin, the Mandarin structure "X Y ADJ" has also gained popularity over the years. Therefore, the same sentence can be re-structured and becomes: :: cf. Mandarin


=Comparative construction with only one noun

= The - or -construction must involve two or more nouns to be compared; an ill-formed sentence will be yielded when only one is being mentioned: : ''*'' (?) Teochew is different from English, where the second noun being compared can be left out ("Tatyana is more beautiful ''(than Lisa)''". In cases like this, the -construction must be used instead: The same holds true for Mandarin and Cantonese in that another structure needs to be used when only one of the nouns being compared is mentioned. Teochew and Mandarin both use a pre-modifier (before the adjective) while Cantonese uses a post-modifier (after the adjective). * Mandarin * Cantonese There are two words which are intrinsically comparative in meaning, i.e. �ã5"better" and u1"worse". They can be used alone or in conjunction with the -structure: Note the use of the adverbial oʔ2 tsoi7at the end of the sentence to express a higher degree.


=Equal construction

= In Teochew, the idea of equality is expressed with the word ẽ5or ẽ5 ĩõ7


=Superlative construction

= To express the superlative, Teochew uses the adverb iaŋ5or iaŋ5 teŋ2 is usually used with a complimentary connotation.


Vocabulary

The vocabulary of Teochew shares a lot of similarities with Cantonese because of their continuous contact with each other. Like Cantonese, Teochew has a great deal of monosyllabic words. However, ever since the standardisation of Modern Standard Chinese, Teochew has absorbed a lot of Putonghua vocabulary, which is predominantly polysyllabic. Also, Teochew varieties in
Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
,
Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Mal ...
and
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...
have also borrowed extensively from Malay.


Archaic vocabulary

Teochew and other Southern Min varieties, such as
Hokkien The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages ...
, preserve a good deal of Old Chinese vocabulary, such as ak''eye'' (, Hokkien: 目 ''ba̍k''), a''dry'' (, Hokkien: 焦 ''ta''), and ʰəŋ''hide'' (cf. ; Hokkien: 囥 ''khǹg'').


Romanisation

Teochew was romanised by the Provincial Education Department of
Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020 ...
in 1960 to aid linguistic studies and the publication of dictionaries, although '' Pe̍h-ūe-jī'' can also be used because Christian missionaries invented it for the transcription of varieties of Southern Min.


Initials

Initial consonants of Teochew, are represented in the Guangdong Romanization system as: B, BH, C, D, G, GH, H, K, L, M, N, NG, P, R, S, T, and Z. ''Examples'': * B - bag (北 north) * Bh - bhê (馬 horse) * C - cên (青 green), cǔi (嘴 mouth), ciên (槍 gun) * D - diê (潮 tide) * G - giê (橋 bridge) * GH - gho (鵝 goose) * H - hung (雲 cloud) * K - ke (去 to go) * L - lag (六 six) * M - mêng (明 bright) * N - nang (人 person) * NG - ngou (五 five) * P - peng (平 peace) * R - riêg/ruah (熱 hot) * S - sên (生 to be born) * T - tin (天 sky) * Z - ziu (州 region/state)


Finals


Vowels

Vowels and
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...
combinations in the Teochew dialect include: A, E, Ê, I, O, U, AI, AO, IA, IAO, IO, IU, OI, OU, UA, UAI, UE, and UI. ''Examples:'' * A - ma (媽 mother) * E - de (箸 chopsticks) * Ê - sên (生 to be born) * I - bhi (味 smell/taste) * O - to (桃 peach) * U - ghu (牛 cow) Many words in Teochew are nasalized. This is represented by the letter "n" in the Guangdong Pengim system. ''Example (nasalized)'': * suan (山 mountain) * cên (青 green)


Ending

Ending
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...
s in Teochew include M and NG as well as the stops discussed below. ''Examples'': * M - iam (鹽 salt) * NG - bhuang (萬 ten thousand) Teochew retains many
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...
stops lost in Mandarin. These stops include a labial stop: "b"; velar stop: "g"; and glottal stop: "h". ''Examples:'' * B - zab (十 ten) * G - hog (福 happiness) * H - tih (鐵 iron)


See also

*
Southern Min Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwa ...
*
Hokkien The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages ...
**
Amoy Hokkien The Amoy dialect or Xiamen dialect (), also known as Amoynese, Amoy Hokkien, Xiamenese or Xiamen Hokkien, is a dialect of Hokkien spoken in the city of Xiamen (historically known as "Amoy") and its surrounding metropolitan area, in the souther ...
**
Taiwanese Hokkien Taiwanese Hokkien () (; Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-uân-uē''), also known as Taigi/Taigu (; Pe̍h-ōe-jī/ Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú''), Taiwanese, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by about ...
*
Languages of China There are several hundred languages in China. The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on central Mandarin, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages, collectively known as ''Hanyu'' (, 'Han language'), that are sp ...
* List of Chinese dialects *
Thai Chinese Thai Chinese (also known as Chinese Thais, Sino-Thais), Thais of Chinese origin ( th, ชาวไทยเชื้อสายจีน; ''exonym and also domestically''), endonym Thai people ( th, ชาวไทย), are Chinese descenda ...
* Chinese in Singapore *
Malaysian Chinese Malaysian Chinese (; Malay: ''Orang Cina Malaysia''), alternatively Chinese Malaysians, are Malaysian citizens of Han Chinese descent. They form the second largest ethnic group after the Malay majority constituting 22.4% of the Malaysian p ...
* Indonesian Chinese


References


Sources

* Beijing da xue Zhongguo yu yan wen xue xi yu yan xue jiao yan shi. (2003). ''Han yu fang yin zi hui''. (Chinese dialectal vocabulary) Beijing: Yu wen chu ban she (北京大學中國語言文學系語言學教研室, 2003. 漢語方音字彙. 北京: 語文出版社) * Cai Junming. (1991). ''Putonghua dui zhao Chaozhou fang yan ci hui''. (Chaozhou dialectal vocabulary, contrasted with Mandarin) Hong Kong: T. T. Ng Chinese Language Research Centre (蔡俊明, 1991. 普通話對照潮州方言詞彙. 香港: 香港中文大學吳多泰中國語文研究中心) * Chappell, Hilary (ed.) (2001). ''Sinitic grammar : synchronic and diachronic perspectives''. Oxford; New York: OUP * Chen, Matthew Y. (2000). ''Tone Sandhi: patterns across Chinese dialects''. Cambridge, England: CUP * DeFrancis, John. (1984). ''The Chinese language: fact and fantasy''. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press * Li, Xin Kui. (1994). ''Guangdong di fang yan''. (Dialects of Guangdong) Guangzhou, China: Guangdong ren min chu ban she (李新魁, 1994. 廣東的方言. 廣州: 廣東 人民出版社) * Li, Yongming. (1959). ''Chaozhou fang yan''. (Chaozhou dialect) Beijing: Zhonghua. (李永明, 1959. 潮州方言. 北京: 中華) * Lin, Lun Lun. (1997). ''Xin bian Chaozhou yin zi dian''. (New Chaozhou pronunciation dictionary) Shantou, China: Shantou da xue chu ban she. (林倫倫, 1997. 新編潮州音字典. 汕頭: 汕頭大學出版社) * Norman, Jerry.
988 Year 988 ( CMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * Fall – Emperor Basil II, supported by a contingent of 6,000 Varangia ...
(2002). ''Chinese''. Cambridge, England: CUP * Ramsey, S. Robert (1986). ''Languages of China''. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...
* Xu, Huiling (2007). ''Aspects of Chaoshan grammar: A synchronic description of the Jieyang dialect''. Monograph Series Journal of Chinese Linguistics 22 * Yap, FoongHa; Grunow-Hårsta, Karen; Wrona, Janick (ed.) (2011). "Nominalization in Asian Languages: Diachronic and typological perspectives". Hong Kong Polytechnic University /Oxford University :
John Benjamins Publishing Company John Benjamins Publishing Company is an independent academic publisher in social sciences and humanities with its head office in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The company was founded in the 1960s by John and Claire Benjamins and is currently managed ...


Further reading

* (the New York Public Library) (digitized April 2, 2008) * (11 Samuel. (Tie-chiu dialect.)) (Harvard University) (digitized December 17, 2007)


External links


1883 American Presbyterian mission press – "A pronouncing and defining dictionary of the Swatow dialect, arranged according to syllables and tones" – by Fielde, Adele Marion
(in English)Link to download(3,022 × 4,010 pixels, file size: 42.21 MB, MIME type: image/vnd.djvu, 648 pages)

(in English, Chinese and Japanese)

(in Chinese)
Glossika - Chinese Languages and Dialects

Mogher
(in Chinese, English and French)



(in Chinese)
Teochew Web
(in Chinese and English)
Tonal harmony and register contour in Chaozhou
{{Chinese language Chaoshan Teochew culture Languages of China Chinese languages in Singapore Languages of Singapore Languages of Hong Kong Languages of Thailand