Jiangsu 10

Listen to Jiangsu 10, a 22-year-old man from Taixing and Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, China. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 22

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/09/1988

PLACE OF BIRTH: Huang Qiao, Taixing, Jiangsu Province

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Han Chinese

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: At the time of the recording, the subject was in his third year at university.

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

Subject came to live in Suzhou, Jiangsu, two-and-a-half years before the date of the recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Influences are slight. He spent three years in Wuxi during his high school years and almost three years at university in Suzhou, where he is an English major. The dialects in both cities are very different to his own and may have had some influence. The major influences will have been his teachers and the need to use Putonghua. His exposure to native English speakers has been limited to two years at university (four hours a week formal teaching) and a few courses of listening to recordings of American and British accents.

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): 21/04/2010

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

About my hometown? (ah) Well (ah), I come from Taixing city, (ah) Jiangsu Province; my hometown is (ah), quite (ah), beautiful (ah), as it is a co- a city of (ah) agriculture – agriculture an- and industry. (ahm) I live – I lived there (ah) from my childhood to – (ah) until (ah, ah ) until middle school and then I graduated from – (ah) and went to study (ah) in Wuxi city. So (ah) I know (ah) only a little about (ah, ah) Taixing, my hometown, my hometown. (ah) But it is still a good memory for me (ah), as [pause] people there are (ahm) generally (ah) very friendly and (ah) they – they like to che- to chat with each other and (ah) communicate with each other, but sometimes (ah), sometimes with quarrels, well, they can (ah) forget about othe- other people’s mistakes and forgive them. So I think (ah) my hometown is a good place to live, to study and (ah) to work. (ah) Maybe I – when – when I graduate from university I – I’d like to go back and serve (ah) to do – do some – some service in my hometown.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/04/2010

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

The subject now goes on to read the following abstracts from the Analects of Confucius in his own Taixinghua dialect. A reading in Putonghua (Mandarin) can be heard on the China 15 sample.

KEY: A = Mandarin (Simplified); B = Mandarin (Pingyin); C = Dialect (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 – Xiá ér tǐ yì – 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 :-  Zhǐ yuè xiá ér sí 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.

C: yī-èr:-  Yǒu péng zhì yuán fāng laí, bù yì là 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.

C: yī-sān:  Rén bù zhī ér bù yùn, bù yì jūn zhǐ 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 – Fi zhen di ni – 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:-  Zhǐ yuè, sī sān bò, yì yíng yǐ bì zhī, yuè, sī wú xiá.

D: 2-2:-  The Master said: In the Book of Odes there are three hundred poems, but they may be summarized 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:- Zhǐ yóu wèn xiào, zhǐ yuè, jīn zhī xiào zhǎi, sì wèi néng yǎng. zhì yū quán má, jiē néng yǒu yáng, 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?

C: èr-shí :-  Zhǐ yuè, sì qí sǒu yī, gūn qí sǒu yóu, chá qí sǒu 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

The subject was raised in Huang Qiao town, Taixing city in Middle Jiangsu. It sits in a meandering plain on the north bank of the Yangtse. The dialect belongs to the Huainan group, which is a member of the Wu family and seems to have become established during the Spring and Autumn period (722-476 BCE). Huainan means south of the Huai River, and this distinguishes it from the Jianghuai dialect of the remainder of Middle Jiangsu. Huainanhua is a small group with only five sub-dialects.

The name Taixing can be translated as “flourishing along with Taizhou,” which emphasizes its subordinate status. It has moved from a largely agricultural base to a significant industrial center. Violin manufacturing is a major element in this, as are the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Taixing’s great claim to fame is as the “Home of the Ginkgo,” a genus of highly unusual non-flowering plants with one surviving species, and regarded as a living fossil. The fossil examples related to the modern plant date back to 270 million years ago. At the end of the Pliocene (2.58 million years ago), Ginkgo fossils had disappeared from the fossil record everywhere except in this small area of China, where the modern species survived.

The subject’s accent is not too strong and is chiefly noticeable for the /θ/ and /ts/ minimal pair characteristic. The substitution occurs in practically every instance. The problem of the possessive and plural /s/ preceded by an /s/ sound that has been noted in other Jiangsu samples is also evident here, but also in this case when preceded by the /r/ phomeas in “here’s.” There is a very nice example of the /r/ – /l/ confusion in the word “quarrels” in the unscripted speech. There is also a slight hint of the /m/ – /n/ substitution, which cropped up particularly in theChina10 sample. Comparison with theChina17 sample will be instructive. Although the two subjects speak different dialects from the Wu group, there are some evident similarities.

COMMENTARY BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/04/2010

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.
• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

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