As time goes on I find myself less and less interested in places like Nántōng 南通 and Dānyáng 丹阳, both Jiāngsū 江苏. Initially the discordant mélange of Wu and Mandarin appealed to me, but it’s happening less and less these days.
A friend of mine is a self-described Nántōng 南通 native, nevermind that his village (just outside Jìngjiāng Shì 靖江市) is technically part of Tàizhōu 泰州 and at least until the mid-1990s was administered by Yángzhōu 扬州. We were talking a few weeks back about the dialects in the Nántōng area and how there are parts that speak Wu, parts that speak Mandarin and parts that speak some mystery language1, apparently close to neither of the first two. He, the friend, was adamant that he speaks a Wu dialect. Fine, I said, let me record a few things.
The following is him counting from one to ten. I’m posting this because of the availability of things to which it can be compared.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The number 6 is quite similar, and a couple others are close. But 二 and 五 are both dead giveaways. The only dialect of Wu I’ve ever encountered that pronounces 五 as anything close to wǔ is that of Gaochun, which by only the youngest generation it’s pronounced [ʋɯ]. The older people and everyone else I know who speaks Wu says something very much if not exactly like [ŋ̩]. 二, meanwhile, ends up being [ɲi] in almost every case.
The pronunciation for 八 is interesting, but not strikingly Wuey.
I think it’s safe to say that anything north of the Yangzi and much west of Hǎimén 海门 is automatically disqualified from further investigation in to its Wuness, regardless of what the locals may claim.
- – -
1. I’ve still never heard or seen any evidence of this language. Anything that’s ever come to me on it has been purely anecdotal.
Have you ever seen an explication of the alternative Mandarin pronunciation of 1 as yāo? Could be coincidence, but the pronunciation here clearly starts with /y/ and there could be a distant link…
Did you only hear about the mystery language from your friend? Or have there been other sources as well? There’s something appealing about its being both super rare and “unrelated”
You may be on to something. The vast majority of Wu dialects use 两 for 二 so why not use the less common yāo. Unfortunately I have no idea about the origins of yāo nor the slightest idea of how to find out.
As far as this goes, “ye” is one in Wu. I’m afraid he might even said that much due to my accidental coaching. At first he said “yī” and then saw my expression (as I too was expecting Wu numbers at this point).