The Differences between Dalian Dialect and Standard Chinese

刘启迪

AbstractDalian dialect is one kind of Northern dialect. Its formation is due to many factors including history, geographical location, Shandong dialect and influence from Russia and Japan. This paper analyzes the main difference between Dalian dialect and Standard Chinese, also presents the characteristics of Dalian dialect in four aspects: phonology, morphology, syntax and slangs.

Key wordsDalian Dialect, phonology, morphology, syntax, slangs

中图分类号：H07 文献标识码：A

As one kind of Northern dialects, Dalian dialect is well known by many people for its unique features especially for its pronunciation.

Historically, Dalian dialect is mainly formed because of its unique geographical location. Dalian is located in the southern part of the Liaotung Peninsular and forms the Bohai Bay together with Shandung Peninsular. During the early years, many Shandungers moved to settle in Dalian. As a result, Dalian dialect is inevitably influenced by Shandung dialect. Through many years of amalgamation and evolution, Shandung dialect and Liaoning dialect combined and developed into a characteristic new dialect—Dalian dialect.

From the linguistic point of view, Dalian dialect is different from the Standard Chinese mainly in phonology. Besides, there are also some unique features in the field of morphology.

Phonologically, although the phonological system of Dalian dialect is the same as that of the Standard Chinese, some special pronunciations of the vowels are different from the Standard Chinese.

1. Difference in the pronunciation of vowel [ａ].

In Standard Chinese, ａis a low front unrounded vowel. The pronunciation of it should be: opening the mouth big; there is a little space between the tip of the tongue and the lower back of teeth; the surface of the tongue lifts a little bit; when voicing, the vocal-fold vibrates with soft-palate uprising and nasal cavity closed. Whereas, in Dalian dialect, when producing vowels withａ,during the pronunciation of ａ, the opening of the mouth is a little smaller so that the sound produced is more like the single vowel [e ]. For example: 爱ai, 来 lai, 债zhai.

2. When the vowel o is spelled after b, p, m, f, the vowel o sounds like e. The pronunciation of o is that the lips form round shape naturally. The tongue moves backward in the oral cavity and the back of blade rises to face the soft palate. During the process of articulation, the vocal cord vibrates, with the rising of the soft palate and closing of the nasal cavity. By contrast, the pronunciation of e is that the mouth is half-opened, and corners of the mouth extend, with the tongue moving backward and the rising of the back of blade, which faces the soft palate. The articulation of e is the same as that of o. Thus, the differences between the pronunciation of the two vowels lie in the two facts: One is the shape of the mouth (o is rounded while e is unrounded) and the other is the location of the tongue (comparing with o, for e, the rising of the back of the blade is much higher and nearer to the front of the month). The example of this is as follows: 破po, 摸mo, 佛fo.

3. When the vowel i is spelled after the initial consonant l, the pronunciation of it changes into the double vowel ei. [i] is a high front unrounded vowel. The pronunciation of it is that the mouth opens small, and the shape of the lips is thin and flat, with corners of the mouth extends, tip of the tongue touching the back of lower teeth and the front of blade rising to face the front of hard palate. During the process of articulation, the vocal cord vibrates, with soft palate rising and nasal cavity closed. For the pronunciation of the double vowel ei, the tip of the tongue touches the back of the lower teeth and the front of blade rises to face the middle of the hard palate. The location of the tongue rises when articulating e and the tongue moves higher when the following i is finally articulated. As a result, the reason of this change from i to ei is that when spelled after the alveolar consonant l during the process of articulation, the tip of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge instead of the blade. In addition, the muscle of the tip of the tongue becomes looser. Examples: 里li, 梨li, 丽li, 栗li.

4. The consonant u is lost when it is a head vowel. In the phonological system of Standard Chinese, there are altogether 8 vowels with u being the head vowel: ua, uo, uai, uei, uan, uen, uang and ueng. In Dalian dialect, the head vowel u is usually lost in the following three vowels: ue, uan and uen. For instance: 对 dui 段 duan 炖dun 钻zuan 最zui 脆 cui寸cun岁sui 酸suan孙sun团tuan屯tun 乱luan.

5. The initial consonant zh ch and sh are sometimes pronounced as z c and s. In Dalian dialect, during the process of articulation, the blade extends to be flat and as a result, z for zh, s for sh and c for ch. For example: 师shi 山 shan 找zhao.

6. Nasalization. For the word that ends with the Chinese character “子”, the last syllable [zi] is nasalized. For example: 孩子, 儿子, 影子, 孙子.

7. As to the tune, there are also distinctive differences from the Standard Chinese. In Dalian dialect, people tend to change the first or second tune to the tune that sounds between the first and falling tune (there is a short period of glide from the first tune to the falling tune). For example, when pronouncing the syllable of the word 山 shan, there id a short period of transition from the first tune to the falling tune.

8. Shandung dialect has influenced Dalian dialec a lot in pronunciation and even now, there still remained some word sounds with Shandung colour especially in the rural area of Dalian, For example: 吃药(chi yue), 钥匙 (yue si), 脚 (jue) ,and so on.

The morphology of Dalian dialect is almost the same as Standard Chinese except for that the repetition of the Chinese characters is usually simplified for. For example: The replication of the Chinese character “人” is written for “人 ”instead of “人人”, which is influenced by Japanese.

The syntax of Dalian dialect is the same as Standard Chinese though it shares some characteristics of Northeastern dialect. Such as the post-positioned adverbial, subjects and so on.

In the following part, the author would introduce some Dalian slangs and the difference of the using of words in Dalian dialect.

For people who have been to Dalian or who have talked to Dalianers, they are most interested with the word “血” in referring to the meaning “very much”. The word “血”(blood) gives an impression of shockness, in that people use it to express feelings of deep degree or for exaggeration. As a result, there are some characteristic slangs in Dalian dialect that derives from it. Such as “血彪”（too foolish）， “血干净”(very good)，”血贵” (very expensive) and so on.

There are also some words that are borrowed from Japan and Russan because of the history of invasion. For example: 衬衫(Japanese word:wayixiaci) 煤气(Russian word: wasi) 磨叽(Japanese word: 年糕)，大列吧（Russian word: khlyeb）. 布拉吉（连衣裙）

Besides, Shandong dialect has also influenced Dalian dialect a lot. For example, the word in Dalian dialect in originated from Shandong dialect. There are also some other similar examples.

To sum up, Dalian dialect is mostly influenced by Shandung dialect as a result of its geographical location and the historical movement. Because of the history of invasion, there remain a few Japanese and Russian words in Dalian dialect. The differences between the Dalian dialect and Standard Chinese mainly lie in the field of phonology.

Reference

[1]SONG Xiegang; Sounds Errors and Analysis in the Vowels of Dalian Dialect[J].Journal of Dalian College of Education,2002.2.

[2]张莹,曹文.大连方言单字调实验研究[A].第九届中国语音学学术会议论文集[C].2010.

[3]董岩.大连方言语音研究[D].中国人民大学,2008.