Hebei 4

Listen to Hebei 4, a 21-year-old man from Baoding Dingzhou, Hebei Province, China. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 21

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/09/1989

PLACE OF BIRTH: Weilin, Hebei Province, but raised in Baoding Dingzhou

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Han Chinese

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: university

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

Subject’s hometown is Baoding Dingzhou, and he lived there, at home with his parents, until he came to university in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, 18 months ago.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

He has had very few direct influences. He did not have any foreign teachers at school. His major is science, and he is learning English as a necessary skill. His accent, therefore, remains very strong.

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): 27/04/2011

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

My hometown is, ah, ahm, Baoding Dingzhou. Ah, it is very small, but it is beautiful. Ah, I like it very much. These years it has changed, ah, ah, –  beautiful more and more. Ah, I lived in –I was borned in Weilin. I often [pause] played with my [pause] friends on [pause] the ground. Hmm, I first to learn English was, ah, 15. But my English is not very good, but I very [pause] like to – li- very like it. I want to learn English very good and speak it – ah, ah, hmm – perfect. Ahm, I want – I want to travel the European one day. I like the [pause] beautiful, ah, of European.

[The subject now goes on to read abstracts from the Analects of Confucius in the standard Mandarin dialect spoken in his hometown. (See commentary below). This can usefully be compared to the Hebei 1 sample to get a good idea of the kind of differences to be heard in even the dialects of Standard Putonghua.]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/06/2013

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); D = English.

孔子: 论语 – Kǒng zǐ : lún yǔ  – Kon zi:leng 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

Héběi is the province in north China that surrounds the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin. The name means “North of the Yellow (River).” Its alternative name in Yānzhào, derived from the states of Yan and Zhao that comprised this territory during the Warring States Period of early Chinese history. It was in the plains of Héběi that Peking Man (a Homo erectus group) flourished around 200,000 to 700,000 years ago. Chinese Neolithic findings at the prehistoric Beifudi site date back to 7000 and 8000 BCE.

After the Warring States Period, China was unified by the Qin Dynasty in 221 BCE and under the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) Héběi consisted of two provinces, Youzhou and Jizhou. Following the end of the Han Dynasty and the period of the Three Kingdoms, Héběi came under the rule of the Kingdom if Wei. Being strategically placed at the northern frontier of China, Héběi changed hands many times during the long period of upheavals during the 5th and 6th centuries.

Stability came with the Tang Dynasty (618-907) when the Province was first designated as Héběi. During the Song Dynasty (960-1127) it again changed hands many times and was ceded to the Jurchen Jin Dynasty when the Southern Song abandoned north China in 1127. Although the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271- 1368) established by Kublai Khan divided China into provinces, Héběi was not designated as a province. The succeeding Ming Dynasty rued it directly from the imperial capital, Beijing. This arrangement was not ended until 1928.

The subject’s hometown is Baoding Dingzhou, which boasts China’s tallest pre-modern pagoda, the 84-metre-tall (276 ft) Liaodi Pagoda. It was built in 1055 during the Song Dynasty. In 1973 a tomb was excavated about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) southwest of Dingzhou dating to 55 BCE and containing several fragments of Chinese literary works, including an early manuscript of the Analects of Confucius, a manuscript of a Daoist work known as Wenzi and fragments of the military treatise Liu tao.

From 1926 to 1937, the county was the site of the National Association of Mass Education Movement’s Ting Hsien Experiment in the Rural Reconstruction Movement.

On this recording we can hear most of  the usual Chinese problems with English  – [s] and [sh], [z] and [zh] pairs, the /θ/- /s/  and /ʒ/- /s/ and the  /v/ and /w/minimal-pair transpositions. An interesting feature is the pronunciation of the final “e” in “rare.” This has not been heard in the speakers of the Wu dialects but is beginning to crop up in these northern dialect regions. Also, this is the best sample so far for the common Chinese habit of adding an additional syllabic ‘ah’ at the end of stressed words, especially those that end with a /t/ or a /d/.

COMMENTARY BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/06/2013

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