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Shanghai Dialect
The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, or Hu language, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the central districts of the city of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Shanghainese, like the rest of the Wu language group, is mutually unintelligible with other varieties of Chinese, such as Mandarin. Shanghainese belongs to a separate group of the Taihu Wu subgroup. With nearly 14 million speakers, Shanghainese is also the largest single form of Wu Chinese. Since the late 19th century, it has served as the lingua franca of the entire Yangtze River Delta region, but in recent decades its status has declined relative to Mandarin, which most Shanghainese speakers can also speak. Like other Wu varieties, Shanghainese is rich in vowels and consonants, with around twenty unique vowel qualities, twelve of which are phonemic. Similarly, Shanghainese also has voiced obstruent initials, which is rare outsi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after India, representing 17.4% of the world population. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and Borders of China, borders fourteen countries by land across an area of nearly , making it the list of countries and dependencies by area, third-largest country by land area. The country is divided into 33 Province-level divisions of China, province-level divisions: 22 provinces of China, provinces, 5 autonomous regions of China, autonomous regions, 4 direct-administered municipalities of China, municipalities, and 2 semi-autonomous special administrative regions. Beijing is the country's capital, while Shanghai is List of cities in China by population, its most populous city by urban area and largest financial center. Considered one of six ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yangtze River Delta
The Yangtze Delta or Yangtze River Delta (YRD), once known as the Shanghai Economic Zone, is a megalopolis generally comprising the Wu-speaking areas of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang, southern Anhui. The area lies in the heart of the Jiangnan region (literally, "south of the Yangtze"), where the Yangtze drains into the East China Sea. Historically the fertile delta fed much of China’s population, and cities and commerce flourished. Today, it is one of China’s most important metropolitan areas and is home to China’s financial center, as well as a tourist destination and hub for manufacture ranging from textile to automaking. In 2024, the Yangtze Delta had a GDP of approximately US$4.7 trillion, about the same size as Germany. The urban buildup in the area has given rise to what may be the largest concentration of adjacent metropolitan areas in the world. It covers and is home to over 240 million people. With about a sixth of China's population and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanci
Tanci is a narrative form of song in China that alternates between verse and prose.Wang, Lingzhen, p53 The literal name "plucking rhymes" refers to the singing of verse portions to a ''pipa''.Hu, Siao-chen, p539 A ''tanci'' is usually seven words long. On some occasions the length is ten words. Some scholars refer to ''tanci'' as "plucking rhymes," "southern singing narrative," "story-sining," "strum lyrics". The local forms of Tanci encompasses Suzhou Tanci, Yangzhou Tanci, Siming Nanci, Shaoxing Pinghudiao, etc. ''Tanci'' consists of both spoken storytelling and sung ballads. Another distinct narrative style is '' pinghua'', a storytelling art form which is purely spoken. The word '' pingtan'' is used as a collective term to refer to ''tanci'' and ''pinghua''.Webster-Chang, p26 History Historically ''tanci'' was a popular art form with women in the lower Yangtze River Valley, specifically the Jiangnan region. It originated as a popular literary genre in the Ming dynas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chuanqi (theatre)
''Chuanqi'' () is a form of Chinese opera popular in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and early Qing dynasty (1644–1912). It emerged in the mid-Ming dynasty from the older form of '' nanxi''. As it spread throughout the empire, it absorbed regional music styles and topolects and eventually evolved into different local genres, among them ''kunqu''. Of the 2000 plus titles recorded in history, over 600 ''chuanqi'' plays are extant and are still performed today, including ''The Peony Pavilion'' by Tang Xianzu, '' The Palace of Eternal Life'' by Hong Sheng, and '' The Peach Blossom Fan'' by Kong Shangren. This tradition of theatre has the same name ''Chuanqi'' (傳奇/传奇) as the tradition of short story and novella, Chuanqi, in Tang dynasty, because at the beginning the plots of the Chuanqi theatre often originated from the Chuanqi stories. Music Whereas its precursor '' nanxi'' predominantly used southern Chinese tunes, which were pentatonic, melismatic, slow and soft, ''chu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suzhou Dialect
Suzhounese (Suzhounese: ; ), also known as the Suzhou Language, is the language belonging to the Sinitic Language Family traditionally spoken in the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu, China. Suzhounese is a dialect of Wu Chinese, and was traditionally considered the Wu Chinese prestige dialect. Suzhounese has a large vowel inventory and it is relatively conservative in initials by preserving voiced consonants from Middle Chinese. Distribution Suzhou dialect is spoken within the city itself and the surrounding area, including migrants living in nearby Shanghai. The Suzhou dialect is mutually intelligible with dialects spoken in its satellite cities such as Kunshan, Changshu, and Zhangjiagang, as well as those spoken in its former satellites Wuxi and Shanghai. It is also partially intelligible with dialects spoken in other areas of the Wu cultural sphere such as Hangzhou and Ningbo. However, it is ''not'' mutually intelligible with Cantonese or Standard Chinese; but, as all publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jiaxing
Jiaxing (), alternately romanized as Kashing, is a prefecture-level city in northern Zhejiang province, China. Lying on the Grand Canal of China, Jiaxing borders Hangzhou to the southwest, Huzhou to the west, Shanghai to the northeast, and the province of Jiangsu to the north. As of the 2020 census, its population was 5,400,868 and its built-up (or metro) area made of 2 urban districts was home to 1,518,654 inhabitants. Administration Jiaxing is the birthplace of the Majiabang Culture in the Neolithic Age. The ancestors engaged in farming, animal husbandry, fishing and hunting 7,000 years ago. The prefecture-level city of Jiaxing administers 7 Administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China#County level, county-level divisions, including 2 District of China, districts, 3 county-level city, county-level cities and 2 County (People's Republic of China), counties. These are further divided into 75 Administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China#Township lev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Pitch Accent
Japanese pitch accent is a feature of the Japanese language that distinguishes words by accenting particular morae in most Japanese dialects. The nature and location of the accent for a given word may vary between dialects. For instance, the word for "river" is in the Tokyo dialect, with the accent on the second mora, but in the Kansai dialect it is . A final or is often devoiced to or after a downstep and an unvoiced consonant. The Japanese term is , and it refers to pitch accent in languages such as Japanese and Swedish. It contrasts with , which refers to stress. An alternative term is which contrasts with . Standard Japanese Normative pitch accent, essentially the pitch accent of the Tokyo Yamanote dialect, is considered essential in jobs such as broadcasting. The current standards for pitch accent are presented in special accent dictionaries for native speakers such as the ''Shin Meikai Nihongo Akusento Jiten'' () and the ''NHK Nihongo Hatsuon Akusento Ji ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern And Southern China
Northern China () and Southern China () are two approximate regions that display certain differences in terms of their geography, demographics, economy, and culture. Extent The Qinling–Daba Mountains serve as the transition zone between northern and southern China. They approximately coincide with the 0 degree Celsius isotherm in January, the isohyet, and the 2,000-hour sunshine duration contour. The Huai River basin serves a similar role, and the course of the Huaihe has been used to set different policies to the north and the south. History Historically, populations migrated from the north to the south, especially its coastal areas and along major rivers. After the fall of the Han dynasty, The Southern and Northern Dynasties (420–589) ruled their respective part of China before re-uniting under the Tang dynasty. During the Qing dynasty, regional differences and identification in China fostered the growth of regional stereotypes. Such stereotypes often appe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xiang Chinese
Xiang or Hsiang ( Chinese: 湘; Changsha Xiang: , Mandarin: ), 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 neighboring Guizhou, Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Hubei provinces. Scholars divided Xiang into five subgroups: Lou–Shao (Old Xiang), Chang–Yi (New Xiang), Chen–Xu or Ji–Xu, Hengzhou, and Yong–Quan. Among those, Lou–Shao, or Old Xiang, still exhibits the three-way distinction of Middle Chinese obstruents, preserving the voiced stops, fricatives, and affricates. Xiang has also been heavily influenced by Mandarin, which adjoins three of the four sides of the Xiang-speaking territory, and Gan in Jiangxi Province, from where a large population immigrated to Hunan during the Ming dynasty. Xiang-speaking Hunanese people have played an important role in Modern Chinese history, especially in those reformatory and revolutionary m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Initial (linguistics)
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are most often consonants). In phonology and studies of languages, syllables are often considered the "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre; properties such as stress, tone and reduplication operate on syllables and their parts. Speech can usually be divided up into a whole number of syllables: for example, the word ''ignite'' is made of two syllables: ''ig'' and ''nite''. Most languages of the world use relatively simple syllable structures that often alternate between vowels and consonants. Despite being present in virtually all human languages, syllables still have no precise definition that is valid for all known languages. A common criterion for finding syllable boundar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 consonants. Subclasses Obstruents are subdivided into: * plosives (oral stops), such as , with complete occlusion of the vocal tract, often followed by a release burst; * fricatives, such as , with limited closure, not stopping airflow but making it turbulent; * affricates, which begin with complete occlusion but then release into a fricative-like release, such as . Voicing Obstruents are often prototypically voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ..., but voiced obstruents are common. This contrasts with sonorant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voiced
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts: *Voicing can refer to the ''articulatory process'' in which the vocal folds vibrate, its primary use in phonetics to describe phones, which are particular speech sounds. *It can also refer to a classification of speech sounds that tend to be associated with vocal cord vibration but may not actually be voiced at the articulatory level. That is the term's primary use in phonology: to describe phonemes; while in phonetics its primary use is to describe phones. For example, voicing accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩. The two sounds are transcribed as and to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronuncia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
