What do they speak in sichuan

You can listen to a Sichuanese speaker talking about his experience with the language and the way it is changing here. Sichuanese also has a curious mixture of northern and southern characteristics, as far as pronunciation goes. Instead these sounds are merged with the alveolar z , s , and c, respectively. This is typical of the accents of southerners when speaking in Mandarin. Phonology is not the only sphere in which Sichuanese differs from Standard Mandarin though.

Sichuanese has a lot of unique vocabulary that is not understood elsewhere as well as archaic or unusual usages which may be understood but are not expected or standard.

Mandarin has these as well, but Sichuanese makes far more extensive use of them and has some of its own unique modal particles as well. This often creates the illusion to outsiders that Sichuanese speakers are irritated or living up to the spicy reputation of their cuisine.

These are only a few common particles, but the everyday speech of the Sichuanese is thoroughly peppered with a wide assortment of such particles, sometimes tagging the end of almost every single sentence. As far as grammar goes, there is not much difference between Sichuanese and Standard Mandarin, though there are some constructions that differentiate the two.

So how did these differences arise? And more importantly, how is it that a version of Mandarin, a northern Chinese language, came to be spoken in the south, the home of the most divergent and conservative Chinese languages? I mentioned traces of Ba-Shu Chinese possibly existing in the vocabulary of modern Sichuanese. Ba-Shu Chinese was actually the first Chinese language spoken in the area of modern day Sichuan. It was an off-shoot of Old Chinese as opposed to most other varieties of Chinese which developed out of Middle Chinese , and though not much is known for certain, it presumably had a phonology that would have been very different from any variety of Chinese spoken today.

The Yuan Dynasty brought a significant population decrease due to Mongol invasions and illness. This significantly decreased the number of Ba-Shu Chinese speakers, and eventually the language was replaced by varieties of Mandarin spoken by in-coming migrants mostly from Hubei. Speakers of other Chinese languages such as Gan, Xiang, and Hakka also made their way to Sichuan, and these languages most likely exerted some influence on the formation of modern Sichuanese as well.

Today Sichuanese flourishes despite the constant pressure of Standard Mandarin. Some of the older pronunciations of words in Sichuanese are giving way to more standard, Beijing-type pronunciations, and many local words and expressions are falling out of use.

The Sichuanese of young people today often resembles relatively standard Mandarin with a slightly compromised Sichuanese phonology. This language was based on the speech of the northern capitals of Nanjing and Beijing, and spread across the northern plains via migration and government influence.

Sign in to Sixth Tone. Please confirm your email address by clicking the link in the email received from us. Please wait until the countdown has finished before clicking the resend button. Just fill in your email and we will help you reset your password. After a secret investigation uncovered that many civil servants and party cadres converse in their local tongue during work hours instead of the standardized Chinese preferred by the government, the southwestern province Sichuan is banning the use of dialects in the office.

The provincial government announced the measure , which applies to state employees, during a press conference on Monday. It said about 10 percent of workers interviewed during the investigation could not speak Mandarin, the standardized language, even after being reminded to do so. They should lead the public by speaking Mandarin, it says, and added that banners and posters reminding people to speak standardized Chinese will be hung up throughout state buildings.

The Communist Party established Mandarin, derived from Chinese spoken in the area around Beijing, in , so that the linguistically diverse country would have a unifying language. Commonly, China is said to have about 80 ethnic-minority languages and 10 groups of dialects spoken by the Han majority, though there are many more varieties.

As of last year, four out of five Chinese people were able to speak Mandarin. You mean with — well, I have [cough] my Chinese circle and American circle are balanced. And I also have a host family in Texas. Yeah, it does in the first couple of months; I would say two months. Though, so first month was OK. I was a little bit like, you know, curious about everything. Well, haha, you know in China, we, uh, people is not allowed to hold guns, so — well, even though my dad has one but just kind of hope I never touch it, but he- when I get here, the first thing, well, my, the first thing my host family like took me to do is go hunting.

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