Jin (language)
Jin or Jinyu ( Chinese 晉 語 / 晋 语 , Pinyin jìnyǔ ) belongs to the group of Chinese languages . While some linguists consider Jin to be a dialect in its own right or a language of its own , others assign it to the North Chinese dialects .
The distribution area of Jins extends over large parts of the Chinese province of Shanxi and Inner Mongolia as well as over some regions of the provinces of Hebei , Shaanxi and Henan . In total, Jin is spoken by around 48 million people, making it one of the 30 most widely spoken languages in the world.
classification
Jin was considered a North Chinese dialect until the 1980s. From 1985, Li Rong advocated his thesis that Jin was an independent language group like Cantonese or Wu . He classified the entry tone as an independent category criterion , similar to the glottic stroke in the Wu dialects, but very different from the North Chinese dialects. Other linguists later accepted this classification, but some still see it differently. The main objections are:
- Languages and dialect groups are normally not delimited by a single function, but by a whole group of distinguishing features between the language group and other related languages and mutual intelligibility.
- Certain other North Chinese dialects also include the glottic stroke, especially the Jianghuai dialects, and so far no linguist has thought of splitting these dialects here.
- In contrast to Wu and Yue (the Cantonese language ), Jin is mutually understandable with other dialects (regiolects) of the mandarin .
Dialects
Jin is divided into eight different dialects:
- Bingzhou, spoken in central Shanxi and Taiyuan
- Lüliang, spoken in West Shanxi and North Shanxi
- Shangdang, spoken in Southeast Shanxi
- Wutai, spoken in some northern regions of Shanxi and in central Inner Mongolia
- Datong-Baotou, spoken in some northern regions of Shanxi and in central Inner Mongolia
- Zhangjiakou – Hohhot, spoken in northwest Hebei and some regions of central Inner Mongolia
- Handan-Xinxiang, spoken in Southeast Shanxi, South Hebei, and North Heinan
- Zhidan – Yanchuan (志丹 - 延川)
The linguistic monument entrance tone
A special feature of the Jin is the preservation of the entrance tone . Like standard Chinese, Jin is one of the tonal languages in which the same syllables are pronounced with different tones (e.g. ascending tone, descending and then ascending tone, high tone) and then have completely different meanings. While only 4 of these tones are preserved in standard Chinese , Jin has a fifth tone, the so-called entry tone ( 入聲 / 入声 , rù shēng ). This entry tone is a tone of very short duration and ends with a consonant or crackling sound. Its sound is described as "like an arrow striking a wooden board".
See also
literature
- Maria Kurpaska: Chinese language (s). A look through the prism of "The Great dictionary of modern Chinese dialects" . de Gruyter Mouton, Berlin / New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-021914-2 .
- Hou Jingyi: 现代 汉语 方言 概论 = Xiandai Hanyu fangyan gailun . Shanghai 2002, ISBN 7-5320-8084-6 .