The Qiyang dialect () is a dialect of
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 ...
spoken in
Qiyang County,
Hunan
Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi ...
province.
Tones
The Qiyang dialect is quite unusual in that it is reported to have two "double contour"
tones, high and low fall–rise–fall, or perhaps high fall – low fall and low fall – high fall: the
entering tones ''yin qu'' (陰去) (4232) and ''yang qu'' (陽去) (2142). However, phonetically the pitch of a syllable depends on the voicing of the initial consonant, so these are phonemically a single tone. Moreover, the final fall of the ''yin qu'' tone is "not perceptually relevant", so it may be that 'dipping' (for ''yin qu'') and 'peaking' (for ''yang qu'') are a sufficient categorization.
References
*Wei Hu, 2011.
Production and Perception of Double Contour Tones in Qiyang Chinese. Presented at the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.
Qiyang
Xiang Chinese
{{st-lang-stub