Ningbo dialect

Ningbo dialect
Yong-Jiang
寧波閒話
Pronunciation	ȵʲɪ̀ŋ.pɜ́ʊ.ɛ́.ó~ȵʲɪ̀ŋ.póʔ.ɛ́.ó
Native to	People's Republic of China
Region	Ningbo & Zhoushan, Zhejiang province
Ethnicity	Ningbo people (Han Chinese)
Native speakers	5-6 million (date missing)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Wu Taihu Ningbo dialect
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	yong1273[1]

Bible in Ningpo Romanised (Genesis), published by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

The Ningbo dialect or Ningbonese (Chinese: 宁波话/寧波話,宁波闲话/寧波閒話) is a dialect of Wu, one of the subdivisions of Chinese varieties. It is spoken in the city of Ningbo and Zhoushan and surrounding areas in Zhejiang province.

Area

The Ningbo dialect is spoken throughout Ningbo and Zhoushan prefectures.

Intelligibility

Its native speakers generally understand Shanghainese, but not vice versa. It is not at all mutually intelligible with Mandarin, China's official language. Ningbo dialect is considered a Yongjiang dialect or Mingzhou dialect (as both terms are synonymous), and is closely related to the Taihu Wu dialects of Zhoushan. In terms of inter-intelligibility between dialects within the Yong-Jiang subgroup, they can be more accurately described as 'accents' (腔) as these dialects are relatively uniform and almost identical to each other aside from pronunciation differences and some minor lexical differences.

Phonology

Initials

		Labial	Dental/Alveolar	Alveolo-Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Plosive	tenuis	p	t		k
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ		kʰ
	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Affricate	tenuis		ts	tɕ
	aspirated		tsʰ	tɕʰ
	voiced		dz	dʑ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ɕ		h
	voiced	v	z	ʑ		f
Lateral			l

Finals

Finals of Ningbo dialect^[2]

		Open			Nasal coda			Glottal stop coda
Medial		∅	j	w	∅	j	w	∅	j	w
Nucleus	u	u
	ə				əŋ
	o	o	jo		oŋ	joŋ
	ɔ	ɔ			ɔ̃	jɔ̃	wɔ̃	ɔʔ
	ɔy	ɔy
	au	au
	a	a	ja	wa	ã	jã	wã	aʔ		waʔ
	ai	ai		wai
	ɛ	ɛ		wɛ
	e	e							jeʔ
	ø	ø							jøʔ
	i	i			iŋ
	ʏ	ʏ
	y	y

Syllabic continuants: [z̩] [z̩ʷ] [m̩] [n̩] [ŋ̩] [l̩]

Tones

Tone classification	Tone symbol	Tone number
T1(陰平)	˥˧	53
T2(陽平)	˨˦	24
T3(陰上)	˧˥	35
T5(陰去)	˦˦	44
T46(陽上去)	˨˩˧	213
T7(陰入)	ʔ˥	5
T8(陽入)	ʔ˩˨	12

Examples

唱月亮

月亮菩薩彎彎上，彎到小姑進后堂。

后堂空，拜相公，

相公念經，打一天井，

天井隔笆，打一稻花，

稻花耘田，打一團箕。

火瑩頭

火瑩頭，夜夜紅，

阿公挑擔賣碗蔥，

新婦織麻糊燈籠，

阿婆箝牌捉牙虫，

兒子看鴨撩屙虫。

References

1. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Yong-Jiang". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
2. Hu, Fang (2005). A phonetic study of the vowels in Ningbo Chinese (Thesis). City University of Hong Kong. Note that /j/ becomes [ɥ] before rounded vowels and that certain finals, such as [ɔy], [ɔʔ] and [jøʔ] are transcribed differently here as the pronunciations in the thesis are different from the transcriptions.

• Ningbo dialect Video on YouTube