Nerdy pseudoacademic time, emphasis on pseudo. A friend of mine had to go to Pinghu (平湖) recently. I remembered reading the name somewhere, knowing it was in Zhejiang but little else. Turns out the way I know it is from some different sound tables I’ve collected among other various Wu dialects.

So in an effort to spread the love, since Wu isn’t just Shanghai (or as it may have seemed since January, just Changzhou), I present the first and possibly last in a series called the Monthly Minor Wu Topolect, or the Monthly MWT.

Pinghuhua, like most Wu dialects, runs a the seven-tone sectrum. They are as follows:

阴平　53　(e.g. 山，音，天，方）
阳平　31　(陈，平，同，云)
阴上　55　(古，好，井)
阴去　44　(送，信)
阳去　13　(事，动，口)
阴入　-5　(吉，国，客)
阳入　-2　(木，肉，读)

At least from the readily available written records, these differ from a number of the neighbouring dialects. And according to at least one such source, the dialect of Jiaxing, the prefecture-level city which now governs Pinghu, swaps 阴平 and 阴上 as compared to the Pinghu dialect. Phonetically, it is very similar to the neighbouring dialcets, the main differences being tonal, though as usual not all sources agree on the tones, so it’s difficult to say one way or another.

From Modern Standard Mandarin, there are some mostly consistent sound shifts. For example, -ang endings (黄, 肮) turn to nasalised -ã, so 黄 should be [ɦuã]. Pinyin’s “sh” is reduced to “s”, as is the case in most Wu topolects, and most if not all syllables taking 阴入 or 阳入 end in a glottal stop (ʔ).

Unfortunately my friend was too busy to track down any locally published sources on the Pinghu dialect, and I was in Suzhou at the time thus unable to tag along, recorder in hand. Looks like that will have to wait for the Annals’ Zhejiang Tour.