The Sanming dialect (
Central Min: 三明事,
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
: 三明話) is a dialect of
Central Min Chinese spoken in urban areas of
Sanming, a
prefecture-level city
A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province and above a county in China's administrative structure.
During the Republican era, many of China ...
in Western
Fujian Province
Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its cap ...
,
China.
Phonology
The Sanming dialect has 18 initials, 37 rimes and 6 tones.
Initials
* Initials may also be heard as prenasal in free variation. When the two initials are followed by non-nasalized rimes, they can be heard as voiced plosives .
* Palato-alveolar sounds can also be heard as alveolo-palatal sounds in free variation among speakers.
Rimes
Tones
The entering tones in the Sanming dialect do not have any entering tone coda () such as , , and . This feature is quite different from many other Chinese dialects.
References
*
*
{{Min Chinese
Central Min