Jiangsu 15

Listen to Jiangsu 15, an 18-year-old man from Taixing and other towns in Jiangsu Province, China. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 18

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 13/11/1991

PLACE OF BIRTH: Taixing, Jiangsu Province

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Han Chinese

OCCUPATION: student

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

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

Subject lived in a number of Jiangsu towns during his childhood. He came to live in Suzhou, Jiangsu, seven months before the date of the recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Influences are very few. The Subject is an English major at university and began to learn English at the age of 14, but all of his teachers were Chinese. The influence of his teachers at university, including some native English speakers, and the need to speak in Putonghua may eventually have an effect, but none is so far apparent.

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): 23/04/2010

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

My – my hometown is Tai- Taixing; it is very beautiful, and (ah) [pause] my ha- my family has (ah) [pause] five people: me, my father, my mother and my [pause] grandfather and mother. [pause] (ahm) I was grow up in Taixing, and (ah) when I was a [pause] student, I like my school life very much and I start to learn English about (ah) 14. OK.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/04/2010

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 Taixing dialect. A reading in Putonghua (Mandarin) can be heard on the Jiangsu 7 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 – 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 :-  zǐ yuè xué é sé xí zí, bè yì yuè fū.

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 cì yuán fāng laí, bè yì là fū.

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 bè zī ér bè yùn, bè yì jūn zǐ fū.

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:-  Zǐ yuè, sī xiān bò, yì yíng yǐ bì zhī, yuè, sī wú yá.

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:- Zǐ yóu wèn xiào, zǐ yuè, jīn zī xiào zhǎi, sì wèi néng géng. cì yū quán má, jiē néng yǒu géng, bè jìng, hé yǐ yí fū.

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 :-  Zǐ yuè, sì qí sǒu yī, guān qí sǒu yóu, cá qí sǒu ān, rén yiān sǒu zāi, rén yiān 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 Qi Wei town, TaiXing city in Middle Jiangsu. It sits in a meandering plain on the north bank of the Yangtse. It is currently under the jurisdiction of Taizhou to the north. 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 centre. 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, which is regarded as a living fossil. The fossil examples related to the modern plant date back 270 million years. 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 fairly strong and is chiefly noticeable for the common characteristics involving the /l/ – /r/ – /n/ minimal pairs, as in “mirror” and “bird.” There is only an occasional /θ/ and /s/ minimal-pair substitution that was so very evident in the other Taixing sample (Jiangsu 10), and this is a good demonstration of the significant differences that can be found between even small towns within the same urban area. In this sample, we also have some evidence of the trailing /a/ after some final consonants, for example in “student” and “and.”

COMMENTARY BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/04/2010

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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