The Changchow Dialect

Abstract

Changchow dialect is one of the Wu dialects, which have three grades of consonants: voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, and voiced aspirated. Wu is spoken in southeastern Kiangsu and most of Chekiang, Changchow being just within the western isogloss dividing Wu from Southern Mandarin. Some Changchow finals are nasalized vowels: i, a, and 0, some end in -ng, but none ends in -n. There are seven tones, four upper and three lower. As in the case of Soochow, one can use types of tone sandhi to distinguish compound words from phrases. There are two subdialects within the city of Changchow, the gentry talk and the street talk, spoken by about 25% and 75% of the citizens, respectively. They differ only in tone or in tone sandhi. article ends with texts of The North Wind and the Sun and The Fox Borrows the Tiger's Prestige.