Gansu 3

Listen to Gansu 3, a 19-year-old woman from Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 19

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/03/1992

PLACE OF BIRTH: Lanzhou, Gansu Province

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Han Chinese

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: university

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject had been living in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, for the seven months prior to the date of the recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject had some native English speakers as teachers in her high school. She also lists watching English movies and listening to VOA and the BBC as influences on her speech.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/04/2011

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Ah, today, ah, today I want to talk about my hometown, Lanzhou. Lanzhou is a very beautiful city in Gansu Province. There are many friendly people and many delicious food, ah, such as beef noodles. In my opinion, ah, if you – if you don’t go to Lanzhou you will not eat the real, good delicious beef noodles. Welcome you to go to my hometown. And Lanzhou also have a many beautiful, ah, mountains, ah, such as fiv, ah, Five Rivers Mountains. Ah, in these mountains there – there will be many tourists man – ah, in every years. Ahm, s-, ahm, if you can – if you can go to my home town, ah, I will treat you very friendly. [The subject now goes on to read abstracts from the Analects of Confucius in her own Lanzhouhua dialect. (See the detailed commentary below.) She has not provided a pinyin transliteration. A reading in standard Putonghua (Mandarin) can be heard on the Hebei 1 sample.]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/07/2013

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

SHORT READINGS FROM THE ANALECTS OF CONFUCIUS

KEY: A = Mandarin (Simplified); B = Mandarin (Pingyin); C = Dialect (Pingyin); D = English.

孔子: 论语 – Kǒng zǐ : lún yǔ – Kon zi: len yu – Confucius: Lun Yu

 

學而第一 – xué ér dì yī – Xué ér dì yī – Chapter One

A: 1-1:-       子曰: 學而時習之、不亦說乎。

B: yī-yī :-    zǐ yuē: xué ér shí xí zhī, bù yì yuè hū.

C: yī-yī :-

D: 1-1:-       The Master said: Is it not pleasure to learn, and practice what is learned time and again?

A: 1-2:-       有朋自遠方來、不亦樂乎。

B: yī-èr:-     yǒu péng zì yuǎn fāng lái, bù yì lè hū.

C: yī-èr:-

D: 1-2:-       Is it not happiness to have friends coming from distant places?

A: 1-3:-       人不知而不慍、不亦君子乎。

B: yī-sān:    rén bù zhī ér bù yùn, bù yì jūn zi hū.

C: yī-sān:

D: 1-3:-       Is it not virtue for a man to feel no discomposure when others take no note of him?

為政第二 – wéi zhèng dì èr – wéi zhèng dì ér – Chapter two

A: 2-2:-       子曰：「詩三百，一言以蔽之，曰：『思無邪』。

B: èr-èr:-     zǐ yuē: shī sān bǎi, yī yán yǐ bì zhī , yuē: sī wú xié.

C: èr-èr:-

D: 2-2:-       The Master said: In the Book of Odes there are three hundred poems, but they may be summarised in a single sentence: Think no evil.

A: 2-7:-       子游問孝。子曰：今之孝者，是謂能養。至於犬馬，皆能有養；不敬,    何 以別乎。

B: èr-qī:-     zǐ yóu wèn xiào. zǐ yuē: jīn zhī xiào zhě, shì wèi néng yǎng. zhì wū quǎn mǎ, jiē néng yǒu yǎng; bù jìng, hé yǐ bié hū.

C: : èr-qī:-

D: 2-7:-       Zi You asked what filial piety was. The Master said: Nowadays, providing support for one’s parents is considered filial piety. But dogs and horses can also do this. If there is no respect, what is the difference?

A: 2-10:-     子曰：「視其所以，觀其所由，察其所安。人焉叟哉？人焉叟哉？

B: èr-shí :- zǐ yuē: shì qí suǒ yǐ , guān qí suǒ yóu, chá qí suǒ ān. rén yān sǒu zāi? rén yān sǒu zāi?

C: èr-shí :-

D: 2-10:-     The Master said: Watch what a man does. Find out his motives. See how he takes his ease. How then can the man hide his true self? How can the man hide his true self?

COMMENTARY

Noticeable characteristics, which can be heard on the recordings, include the problems with [s] – [sh] and [eI] – [aI] pairs. There are also some examples of the /v/ and /w/ minimal pair transpositions and an occasional /a/ added to the ends of some words.

The dialect spoken in Gansu is Lan-Yin, one of the eight dialects of Mandarin. (The modern standardized Putonghua is based on Beijing Mandarin.) The dialect is also spoken in northern Xinjiang, and the name is a compound of the capitals of the two provinces, Lanzhou and Yinchuan, which are also two of its principal sub-dialects. The Lanzhou sub-dialect has its own subtle characteristics, and it is on this that the unique language of the Peking Opera is based.

The subject’s native dialect is the Lan-Yin dialect, one of the Zhongyuan Mandarin or Central Plains Dialects. The dialect is also spoken in northern Xinjiang, and the name is a compound of the capitals of the two provinces, Yinchuan and Lanzhou, which are also two of its principal sub-dialects. This recording should be compared with Gansu 1, Gansu 2, and the Xinjiang 4 samples to get an idea of the differences between the sub-dialects of Zhongyuan mandarin.

The subject’s hometown is Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu Province, which was originally in the territory of the Western Qiang peoples. Gansu is the long snaking province in northwestern China. It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and has the Yellow river (Huang Jiang) flowing through its southern part. Historically, Gansu is of great significance for two reasons: firstly, as the birthplace of the Chinese Nation, which began in 221 BCE with the rise of the Qin dynasty around the modern city of Tianshui (translation: Heaven Water), which was then known as Qinting. Secondly, the entire province lay along the Northern route of the Silk Road that ran from Chang ‘An (now Xian) to Constantinople (now Istanbul). To protect the city, the Great Wall of China was extended as far as Yumen.

Gansu was also the site of three important prehistoric (Chinese Neolithic) cultures: the Dadiwan culture, which flourished from 6,000 to 3,000 BCE, the Majiayao culture from 3,100 to 2,700 BCE, and the Qijia culture from 2,400 to 1,900 BCE.

The Silk Road came into being during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 CE), and this established the whole Gansu as an economically prosperous zone. During the Sui (581 – 518 CE) and Tang (618 – 907 CE) dynasties, the exploitation of resources such as agriculture and gold turned the area into the most prosperous in China.

After the fall of the Han Dynasty, Lanzhou became the capital of a succession of tribal states,being briefly the capital of the independent state of Liang the 4th century. The Northern Wei dynasty (386–534) renamed the county Zicheng, and between the 5th and 11th centuries it was a major center for Buddhist studies. Under the Sui Dynasty (581–618), the city became the seat of Lanzhou prefecture for the first time.

Under the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), the prefecture was demoted to a county and placed under the administration of Lintao superior prefecture, but in 1477 Lanzhou was re-established as a political unit. The city acquired its current name in 1656, during the Qing Dynasty. When Gansu was made a separate province in 1666, Lanzhou became its capital.

Lanzou is an industrial city and its main industries include textile mills, rubber processing, and fertilizer plants, an oil refinery, petrochemicals, machinery, and metallurgical industry. Gansu has one of the largest oil refineries in the country, and Lanzhou itself is the center of the province’s petrochemical industry, having a large refinery linked to the fields at Yumen by pipeline. It has also been one of the centers of China’s national nuclear power industry since the 1960s.

COMMENTARY BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/07/2013

The archive provides:

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