This month for the Monthly Minor Topolect we’re looking at Shaoxing dialect from Northern Zhenjiang. The city is on the site of the 越国 capital of the Spring and Autumn Period. The population is just over 4 million and it’s geographically pretty close to Hangzhou.

Tones
Shaoxing dialect, unlike most of the Northern Wu dialects, has the full 8 tones, four in each register. They are as follows:

　阴平　４１　　　阴上　３３５　　阴去　３３　　阴入　４
　阳平　２３１　　阳上　１１３　　阳去　１１　　阳入　２　

Unlike contours for a number of dialects, we can clearly see 阴 and 阳 as upper and lower registers.

Personal pronouns
Note the differences between “I” and “you” are absurdly small if you’re not so great with /ŋ/ at the beginning of words.

Example sentences
And some examples:

　你是不是杭州人？← 绍兴话
　noʔ˨ ze˩˩˧ veʔ˨ ze˩˩˧ ɦɒŋ˨˧˩ tsɤ˦˩ ɲiŋ˨˧˩?
　你是不是杭州人？← 普通话

　今朝只有你一个人来埭啊。
　ʨiŋ˦˩ tsɒ˦˩ ʨiʔ˦ ʨiɤ˦˩ noʔ˨ ieʔ˦ gəʔ˨ ɲiŋ˨˧˩ le˨˧˩ da˩˩ a˩˩
　今天只有你一个人在啊。

　你还好去来。
　noʔ˨ væʔ˨ hɒ˧˧˥ ʨʰi˧˧ le˧˧
　你还可以去。

More
Most of this information is coming from a book published by Zhejiang University Press (浙江大学出版社) which goes in to a huge amount of detail at about 294000 characters. I gotta say I like that books are calculated by number of characters, not pages, in the Chinese equivalent of the Library of Congress details in the first page or so. If you’re big into 绍兴话 and want the book, it’s called 《吴越文化视野中的绍兴方言研究》 and is listed at 元36.