The Tianjin dialect () is a Mandarin dialect spoken in the city of

Tianjin Tianjin is a direct-administered municipality in North China, northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the National Central City, nine national central cities, with a total population of 13,866,009 inhabitants at the time of the ...

, China. It is comprehensible to speakers of other Mandarin dialects, though its greatest deviation from the others lies in its individual tones, and the lack of

retroflex consonant A retroflex () or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consona ...

s. The regional characteristics make the dialect an important part of the Tianjin city identity, and sharply contrasts with the dialect of nearby Beijing, despite relatively similar phonology.

Characteristics

The Tianjin dialect is classified under

Jilu Mandarin Jilu or Ji–Lu Mandarin, formerly known as Beifang Mandarin "Northern Mandarin", is a dialect of Mandarin Chinese spoken in the Chinese provinces of Hebei (冀, Jì) and the western part of Shandong (魯, Lǔ) and Xunke, Tangwang & Jia ...

, a subdivision of

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

dialects also spoken in

Hebei Hebei is a Provinces of China, province in North China. It is China's List of Chinese administrative divisions by population, sixth-most populous province, with a population of over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. It bor ...

and

Shandong Shandong is a coastal Provinces of China, province in East China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River. It has served as a pivotal cultural ...

provinces. Despite Tianjin being a neighbor of

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, its dialect sounds very different from the

Beijing dialect The Beijing dialect ( zh, s=北京话, t=北京話, p=Běijīnghuà), also known as Pekingese and Beijingese, is the prestige dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. It is the phonological basis of Standard Chinese, the ...

, which is the basis for

Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912–1949). ...

. The tones of the Tianjin dialect correspond to those of the Beijing dialect (and hence Standard Chinese) as follows: The differences are minor except for the first tone: Where it is high and level in Beijing, it is low and falling in Tianjin. All words with the first tone, including the name "Tianjin", are affected, giving the Tianjin dialect a downward feel to people from Beijing. The Tianjin dialect also includes four

tone sandhi Tone sandhi is a phonological change that occurs in tonal languages. It involves changes to the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes, based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. This change typically simplifies a bidirec ...

rules, more than the Beijing dialect. They are, #Tone 1 + Tone 1 → Tone 3-Tone 1: 天津 ''tiān jīn'' is pronounced /tǐanjīn/ (using

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...

tone diacritics) #Tone 3 + Tone 3 → Tone 2-Tone 3: 水果 ''shuǐ guǒ'' is pronounced /shuíguǒ/ (as in Standard) #Tone 4 + Tone 4 → Tone 1-Tone 4: 現在 ''xiàn zài'' is pronounced /xiānzài/ #Tone 4 + Tone 1 → Tone 2-Tone 1: 上班 ''shàng bān'' is pronounced /shángbān/ There are some other patterns that differentiate the Tianjin dialect from the Beijing dialect. One is the pronunciation of 饿 (餓) as ''wò'' (臥) instead of ''è''. Lastly, the Tianjin dialect lacks the retroflex consonants () prevalent in Beijing, not unlike

Taiwanese Mandarin Taiwanese Mandarin, frequently referred to as ''Guoyu'' () or ''Huayu'' (), is the variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in Taiwan. A large majority of the Taiwanese population is fluent in Mandarin, though many also speak a variety of Min Chinese ...

. Thus, ''zh'' (ㄓ) becomes ''z'' (ㄗ), ''sh'' (ㄕ) becomes ''s'' (ㄙ), ''ch'' (ㄔ) becomes ''c'' (ㄘ), and ''r'' (ㄖ) becomes ''y'' (一) — that is, is pronounced ''yěn'' instead of ''rén'', and is pronounced ''yàng'' (樣) instead of ''ràng''. However, the use of the ''-er'' (儿) diminutive is common in the Tianjin dialect, as it is throughout the north and northeast. (See:

Erhua ''Erhua'' (), also called "erization" or "rhotacization of syllable finals", is a phonological process that adds r-coloring or the ''er'' (; ) sound to syllables in spoken Mandarin Chinese. ''Erhuayin'' () is the pronunciation of "er" after r ...

.) Chinese speakers commonly stereotype the Tianjin dialect as aggressive- or confrontational-sounding, though it is not difficult for speakers of other Mandarin dialects to understand.

Characteristics

See also

References

Further reading