1887
Volume 30, Issue 1-2
  • ISSN 0957-6851
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9838
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

As one of the industrial centers of Western China, Xi’an is undergoing a process in which surrounding “urban villages” are incorporated into the urban area. This paper reports on the contact situation between the Xi’an dialect of Beishan Menkou “urban village” and Mandarin Chinese. Data collection started with traditional dialect survey methodology which assumes the dialect to be homogeneous and shared across village members. It requires respondents to read a standard list of Chinese characters. The assumption that the dialect is homogeneous is generally agreed upon for older generations but is doubtful for the younger generation who are exposed to modern education and modern life. We therefore stratified the survey across three generations with six informants, a male and female informants for each generation. The results show that the dialect among the two older generations was still homogeneous and shared, whereas the youngest generations showed influence of Putonghua on the dialect. This resulted in a new dialect variant “Dialect with Putonghua features”, which is recognized by urban village members as such. Female respondents generally were conceived of as speaking the New Dialect more clearly than their male counterparts. We also investigated the impact of the dialect on Putonghua and concluded that among the younger generation, a form of “Local Putonghua” developed, whereas the accented forms used by older generations are a variety of intermediate forms of this “Local Putonghua”. The paper further provides details of the changes taking place in the New Dialect in terms of tones, initials and finals, vocabulary and grammar. Words in local Putonghua were also listed.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/japc.00050.qio
2020-06-30
2025-02-17
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. van den Berg, Marinus
    (2019) The Restructuring of Chinese Speech Communities: The Case of Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province. China Language Strategy中国语言战略1–22.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. van Bree, Cor
    (2010) Stability of elements in Dutch dialects. In, M. E. van den Berg and Daming Xu (Eds.), Industrialization and the Restructuring of Speech Communities in China and Europe, (pp.283–302). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Chamber, J. K. and P. Trudgill
    (2002) Dialectology. Peking: Peking University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Chao, Yuen Ren
    (1968) A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Chen, Yachuan
    (1991) The Nature of “Local Putonghua” and Others. World Chinese Teaching 1991 (1): 13.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Chen, Zhangtai
    (2005) Language Planning Research. Beijing: The Commercial Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Funio, Inoue
    (2019) New Dialect, Urbanization and Historical Sociolinguistics. Paper presented at17Th Annual Meeting of Urban Language Studies, August 23–26, 2019. Xi’an, China. Proceedingspp.11–13.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Guo, Jun
    (2007) Language attitude and dialect varieties – A survey of language attitude and language usage in Lishui county. Social Sciences in Nanjing.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Hou, Jinyi
    (1994) Review and Prospect of Putonghua (Mandarin) Promotion. Applied Linguistics (Yuyan Wenzi Yingyong) 1994/4: 74.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Lan, Binhan
    (2004) Several Adverbs of Degree in Xi’an Dialect. Journal of Shaanxi Normal University, 99.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Liu, Yuting, He, Shenjing, Wu, Fulong, Webster, Chris
    (2010) Urban villages under China’s rapid urbanization: Unregulated assets and transitional neighbourhoods. Habitat International34: 135–144. 10.1016/j.habitatint.2009.08.003
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2009.08.003 [Google Scholar]
  12. Lu, Tuanhua
    (2010) A Comparison between the Phonetic Features of Xi’an Dialect and the Pronunciation of Mandarin, Kaoshi Zhoukan9.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Ma, Mao-Peng
    (2005) Acoustic Study of the Tones of Xi’an Dialect. Journal of Yan’an University.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. MOE
    MOE (2014) News Release of the 17th National Putonghua Promotion Week. Ministry of Education of PRC. old.moe.gov.cn//publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s8316/201409/174957.html
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Sun, Lixin
    (1997) Classification of the Xi’an Dialect, Dialect, vol.2, pp.106–124.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. (2010) Internal Differences in the Pronunciation of Xi’an Dialect. Journal of Gansu Normal University.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. XTN
    XTN (2017) Xi’an Tongji Nianjian (Xi’an Statistical Yearbook). China Statistics Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. You, Rujie & Zou, Jiayan
    (2004) Sociolinguisitics. Shanghai: Fudan University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Zhao, L.
    (2008) The Correspondent regularities between Mandarin and Shaanxi Dialect. Journal of Baoji University of Arts & Sciences.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/japc.00050.qio
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/japc.00050.qio
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error