Wencheng dialect

Wencheng dialect (文成話) is a dialect of Wu Chinese. It is an Oujiang dialect, but its tone system is different from other Oujiang dialects such as Wenzhounese.

Wencheng dialect
文成話
Native to	People's Republic of China
Region	Wenzhou prefecture, Zhejiang province
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Wu Oujiang Wencheng dialect
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
ISO 639-6	wceg
Glottolog	None

Phonology

The most important difference between eastern Oujiang dialects such as Wencheng and Wenzhou proper are tonal differences and the retention of /f/ before /o/:

	八	风	到	晓得
Wenzhou	puu	hoŋ	tə	ɕadei
Wencheng	bɔ	foŋ	tɶ	ɕoli

Wencheng shares the long vowels of Wenzhonese entering tone (spelled puu above) as well as the abrupt glottal stops of the sheng tones. The shang and ru tones are largely similar to Wenzhonese, but there are no falling tones—yang ping and yin qu are level—and yang qu is dipping rather than simply low.

Tone chart of Wencheng dialect[1]

Tone number	Tone name	Tone contour
1	yin ping (陰平)	˧ 3
2	yang ping (陽平)	ʱ˨ 2
3	yin shang (陰上)	˧˦ʔ 34
4	yang shang (陽上)	ʱ˨˧ʔ 23
5	yin qu (陰去)	˨ 2
6	yang qu (陽去)	ʱ˧˨˧ 323
7	yin ru (陰入)	˨˧ː 23
8	yang ru (陽入)	ʱ˨˩˧ː 213

Although yin qu has been said to have merged with yang ping (these are also close in Wenzhou, both being falling tones), the consonant voicing remains distinct. A second, slightly different transcription of Wencheng tone is reported, presumably largely due to speaker differences.

References

1. Phil Rose, 2008. "Oujiang Wu tones are acoustic reconstruction", in Morphology and language history: in honour of Harold Koch, p 245