The Zhangzhou dialects, also rendered Changchew, Chiangchew or Changchow, are a collection of Hokkien dialects spoken in southern Fujian province (in southeast China), centered on the city of Zhangzhou. The Zhangzhou dialect proper is the source of some place names in English, including Amoy (from, now called Xiamen), and Quemoy (from , now called Kinmen).

Classification

The Zhangzhou dialects are classified as Hokkien, a group of Southern Min varieties. In Fujian, the Zhangzhou dialects form the southern subgroup (南片) of Southern Min. The dialect of urban Zhangzhou is one of the oldest dialects of Southern Min, and along with the urban Quanzhou dialect, it forms the basis for all modern varieties. When compared with other varieties of Hokkien, it has an intelligibility of 89.0% with the Amoy dialect and 79.7% with the urban Quanzhou dialect.

Phonology

This section is mostly based on the variety spoken in the urban area of Zhangzhou.

Initials

There are 15 phonemic initials: When the rime is nasalized, the three voiced phonemes, and are realized as the nasals , and , respectively.

Rimes

There are 85 rimes: The vowel is the open central unrounded vowel in most rimes, including, , , , , , , ,. In the rimes and, is realized as (i.e. as and ) or (i.e. as and ). The rimes and are usually realized with a short between the vowel and the velar consonant. In many areas outside of the urban area of Zhangzhou, including Pinghe, Changtai, Yunxiao, Zhao'an and Dongshan, and are pronounced as and instead. The codas, and are unreleased, i.e. , and , respectively.

Tones

There are seven tones: Most people in the urban area do not pronounce the dark level tone as high-level, but slightly mid-rising. While most sources still records this tone as 44, its tone value has also been recorded as 24, 45, 34 or 35 to reflect its rising nature.

Tone sandhi

The Zhangzhou dialect has nine tone sandhi rules: only the last syllable of nouns and clause endings remain unchanged by tone sandhi. The two-syllable tone sandhi rules are shown in the table below:

Sources