Northern Min
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Northern Min () is a group of
mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
Min varieties spoken in
Nanping Nanping; historically known as Yanping ( zh, s=延平, poj=Iân-pêng is a third-tier prefecture-level city in northwestern Fujian province of China, Province, China, People's Republic of China. It borders Ningde to the east, Sanming to the sou ...
prefecture of northwestern
Fujian Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern 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 capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...
.


Classification and distribution

Early classifications of
varieties of Chinese There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the m ...
, such as those of Li Fang-Kuei in 1937 and Yuan Jiahua in 1960, divided Min into Northern and Southern subgroups. However, in a 1963 report on a survey of Fujian, Pan Maoding and colleagues argued that the primary split was between inland and coastal groups. In a reclassification that has been followed by most dialectologists since, they restricted the term Northern Min to inland dialects of Nanping prefecture, and classified the coastal dialects of
Fuzhou Fuzhou is the capital of Fujian, China. The city lies between the Min River (Fujian), Min River estuary to the south and the city of Ningde to the north. Together, Fuzhou and Ningde make up the Eastern Min, Mindong linguistic and cultural regi ...
and
Ningde Ningde,; Foochow Romanized: Nìng-dáik; also known as ''Mindong''; zh, s=闽东, p=Mǐndōng, links=no; Foochow Romanized: Mìng-dĕ̤ng; lit. East of Fujian previously Chinese postal romanization, romanized as Ningteh and Ning-Taik, is a prefe ...
as
Eastern Min Eastern Min or Min Dong (, Foochow Romanized: ) is a branch of the Min group of the Chinese languages of China. The prestige form and most commonly cited representative form is the Fuzhou dialect, the speech of the capital of Fujian. Geogra ...
. According to the ''
Language Atlas of China The ''Language Atlas of China'' ( zh, s=中国语言地图集, t=中國語言地圖集, p=Zhōngguó yǔyán dìtú jí), published by Hong Kong Longman Publishing Company in two parts in 1987 and 1989, maps the distribution of both the varietie ...
'', Northern Min varieties are spoken throughout the counties of Wuyishan (formerly Chong'an), Jianyang, Jian'ou, Zhenghe and Songxi, in the southern part of Pucheng County and the northeastern part of Shunchang County, and in
Yanping District Yanping District is a district (China), district of Nanping, Fujian province, China, People's Republic of China. The population of Yanping District was 454,605 at 2020. Etymology The name of the district literally means "Prolong Peace", and it is ...
except for the Nanping dialect of the urban area of Nanping, which is an island of an isolated
Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
dialect of uncertain affinity. The Jianyang and Jian'ou dialects are often taken as representative. Although coastal Min varieties can be derived from a
proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...
with four series of stop or affricate initials at each point of articulation (e.g. , , and ), Northern Min varieties contain traces of two further series, one voiced and the other voiceless. In Northern Min dialects, these initials have a different tonal development from other stops and affricates, though the details vary between varieties. Moreover, although in Jian'ou and Zhenghe these initials yield voiceless unaspirated initials (as in coastal varieties), they yield voiced sonorants or the zero initial in Jianyang and Wuyishan. Because of these reflexes, Jerry Norman called these initials "softened" stops and affricates.


Notes


References

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Further reading

* Akitani, Hiroyuki 秋谷裕幸. 2008. ''Minbeiqu sanxianshi fangyan yanjiu'' 閩北區三縣市方言研究. Taipei:
Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, ; zh, t=中央研究院) is the national academy of the Taiwan, Republic of China. It is headquartered in Nangang District, Taipei, Nangang, Taipei. Founded in Nanjing, the academy supports research activities in mathemat ...
. (Documents three Northern Min dialects in detail: Shibei 石陂 of Pucheng County; Zhenqian 镇前 of Zhenghe County; Dikou 迪口 of Jian'ou City) *Fujian Normal University Research Institute 福建师范学院. n.d. ''Mindong, Bei fangyan diaocha ziliao huibian (part 1)'' 闽东、北方言调查资料汇编: 第1辑. Fujian Normal University Research Institute 福建师范学院, Dialectology group, Chinese language department 中文系语言教研组 方言调查小组. *Huang Chin-wen 黄金文. 2001. 方言接觸與閩北方言演變 / ''Language contact and the phonological changes in North Min''. Taipei: National Taiwan University. *Ma Chongqi 馬重奇. 2014. 明清閩北方言韻書手抄本音系研究 / ''A phonological study of the manuscripts of Northern Fujian Dialect rhyme books in the Ming and Qing Dynasties''. Beijing: Commercial Press. *Pan Weishui 潘渭水. 2007. ''Minbei fangyan yanjiu'' 闽北方言研究. Fuzhou: Fujian Educational Press 福建教育出版社. * {{Chinese language