Basic Tones of Ningde Dialect

Language is alive, and the bilingual state of Ningde people is changing and turbulent.

Experts believe that the basic tone of Ningde dialect was basically formed as early as the end of the Tang Dynasty. Ningde County was founded in 933 AD in the late Tang Dynasty, with a history of more than 1000 years. Ningde once designated Guanli Town in Northwest China as the current administration in the third year of Song Xianping (A.D. 1000), and it was assigned to Zhouning ③ in 1930s. As a geographical concept, the regional scope of Ningde is basically stable. As a cultural concept, it has specific dialects, unique folk customs, proverbs and people's local concepts. These also have a long history.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties and the Republic of China, there were definitely few people who could speak northern dialects in Ningde. Now Mandarin is formed on the basis of Beijing dialect. It is said that Beijing dialect was formed in the middle of Ming Dynasty after Manchu entered the customs. Mandarin at that time was more similar to Wu dialect, which is the language of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River now. Now we can't imagine how Yu Fu, the champion of Ningde Song Dynasty, talked with the emperor in Kaifeng. It's hard to imagine what tone Lin Cong used when he was an official in Beijing for forty years. From another point of view, ancient officials followed the avoidance system, and those who came to Ningde to be officials and officials lived thousands of miles away and did not belong to Fuzhou dialect area. Such as Lu You, a Shaoxing native in the Song Dynasty, Lin Shifang, a Cantonese native in the Ming Dynasty, and Wang Darun, a Henan native in the Qing Dynasty. What is certain is that their communication with the local people in Ningde is smooth. They speak "Mandarin" or study local dialects hard. They may have contact with some people who can understand Mandarin.

The exchange of gentry, or officials in the county government, itself played the role of translation. This situation remained until the early 1950s.

Modern people in Ningde are very enthusiastic about learning Mandarin. As early as the 1920s and 1930s, some young people in Ningde were showing off their "national language" with a strong Ningde accent. Called "fake sand" by villagers, it is a fake sand county. But in any case, this is the beginning of the national common language entering the people's class. The development of new education has also played an important role in the popularization of Putonghua. In the thirty years of the Republic of China, Ningde began to develop from two county-level high schools in the early years of the Republic of China. By the end of 1940s, there was a provincial high school, 12 six-year primary schools and 3 1 4-year primary schools. At that time, middle school students were proficient in using Mandarin. Therefore, when a large number of northern cadres went south to Ningde countryside to carry out land reform and eliminate bandits, it was not particularly difficult to carry out their work through translation. These northern cadres are called "two voices" by Ningde people, which means different voices. But different voices are not only the northern languages, but also the languages of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Minnan, Puxian, Guangdong and even foreign countries, which gradually entered Ningde in the modern history of a hundred years, thus affecting and changing Ningde dialect to some extent. Especially after the founding of New China, a large number of migrants entered Ningde Chengguan, which had a great influence on Ningde dialect.

Fifty years ago, there were only over 20,000 people who spoke Jiaocheng dialect, the standard pronunciation of Ningde dialect. A few miles out of the city, I arrived in Kim, zhang wan, and my pronunciation changed. In recent years, with the rapid expansion of cities, the population in urban areas has increased several times due to immigration. People who speak pure Jiaocheng pronunciation are already a "minority" in urban areas. Different from Fuzhou and other cities with large scale and great cultural influence, Ningde has no "centripetal" center as linguists say, and the dialect changes quite obviously.

Compared with Mandarin, Ningde dialect is a "compound" language. Chinese pronunciation consists of initials, finals and tones. Modern Chinese has 2/kloc-0 initials, 30 finals and 4 tones. There are fifteen initials in Ningde dialect, including zero initials with vowels as the head, but there are as many as 78 vowels. Moreover, there are seven tones. In addition to Yin Ping, rising tone, Shangsheng and Desheng, there are four categories: Yin entering, Yang entering and Yin going to Yang. Therefore, there are many words and sounds that cannot be expressed when using modern pinyin or Chinese characters pronounced in Putonghua to annotate Ningde pronunciation. The use of entering tone in tone is also very interesting. When young people listen to the older generation speak Mandarin, they tend to get excited. For example, China's "Country" and "Strike while the Iron is Hot" are full of local flavor. However, this is also the influence of mother tongue. This influence comes from the far north, not just Ningde. However, this ancient pronunciation is changing rapidly.

According to experts, in the 1950s, Ningde dialect, represented by Jiaocheng dialect, still retained three sets of rhyme endings, namely, medieval Yang rhyme and entering rhyme. This is unique in the county dialect of Fujian Oriental dialect. Now these three sets of rhyme endings have been "from confusion to integration, and have been basically completed in young people's spoken language". In Ningde dialect, there are great differences in tone sandhi, tone sandhi and chorus between the old and the young. In the elderly population of Ningde, the initials of the last word are often the finals of the previous word, or the initials of the last word are subtracted, such as "bank" and "government", or "money paper" and "duck". This accent with cadence, cadence and chorus is very different between the older generation and the younger generation. Only proper nouns such as "Jinxi" and "Xiancun" still retain this pronunciation.

Lexically, there have been great changes. Some old words are unheard of by young people, and some new words are very strange to old people. The former include: shadow play, making money, tooth man, soldier A, shoe cover clogs, and even cooperatives, communes, posters, meal cards, tickets and so on. The latter such as "online chat", "true bar", "super girl" and "spoof". There are also some retro words, such as "calligraphy" and "title edge", which have gradually invaded the spoken language of modern dialects.

It is inevitable that some components bearing historical and cultural information in Ningde dialect will gradually disappear. Therefore, the publication of this anthology is timely and of special significance.