There are a few things I find myself asking when I meet people from previously unheard of parts of China; How do you say 你好，谢谢 and 再见? Then I ask for numbers one to ten. I’m sure I’ve annoyed my share of people with these seemingly useless questions, but for me they’ve always given me a good idea of the sound of a dialect. Furher, numbers always seemed important to me as some of the most common and useful words to learn.

The following is a list of numbers from one to ten in the dialects running from Shànghǎi to Nánjīng with the last four columns covering Hángzhōu, Qúzhōu/Jiāngshān, Línhǎi and Chánglè dialects all from Zhèjiāng province. Holes in the table do not represent an absence of that number but rather an absence of data in my possession. Note I’m missing a bit of Suzhou dialect. If anyone is willing to send a clear recording of those numbers by a native speaker, I would be grateful and your name would appear in pixely lights on the site.

A couple notes: Due to its greater frequency over 二, 两 has been given for most dialects. While 二 is still used frequently, e.g. the “twenty two” in “two hundred and twenty two”^‡, it will be replaced in most. So, for example, an apartment numbered 2210 will be read as “两两一零”.

In some cases I have only partial data and no speakers handy of whom I can ask the favour. The number 7 in Hangzhou, for example, I know to be a high tone and terminating with a glottal stop. However the specific text from which I’ve taken that information did not provide information on the vowel and guessing didn’t seem appropriate.

The Wǔjìn set was taken from one of many villages in the Wǔjìn area. It’s a slightly more rural sound than you may get closer to downtown Wujin or Changzhou. The most notable difference between the list for Wujin and urban Changzhou dialect is 三 becomes seiʔ⁵.

This took quite some time to compile using a number of sources. Most are from recordings I’ve made and transcribed myself. Some are my own transcriptions from outside recordings. Most of the Zhejiang data were compiled from a number of academic papers on Wu, mostly available through the Wu Association page. If you’re curious about specifics let me know and I’ll get the details.

Some of the tone numbers for recorded samples have been taken from various of sources including work by the ubiquitous YR Chao and Glossika’s excellent collection of tone tables. Trusting their research over my own ears I’ve done my best to match the sounds I heard to the tone values given. I reserve the right to have completely missed the mark on the tones and transcription.

This is especially true with the Gaochun tones. Due to the age of my speaker there is a notable discrepancy with what is available elsewhere, mostly because what’s elsewhere is at least a generation older. If you look hard enough you may find the table to the right, scanned from some text of dialect tone tables. I imagine it’s where the Glossika tones came from and unfortunately there’s only the one set. There are some notable and consistent differences between my speaker and the tables, so perhaps we can call the Glossika numbers 高淳老派 and these 高淳新派.

Of less academic value but greater practical value, I offer the following table. A large part of my motivation for compiling this data was to get a better sense of the ἰδέα^҂. What follows is my best guess at a collection of what should be universally understood numbers. Superscript corresponds to Mandarin tones, not tone values as in the previous table.

For what it’s worth I’ve had some success with this in Changzhou and Wujin as well as with one Shanghai transplant and one from Danyang.

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† I’ve given two different pronunciations for 五 in Gaochun dialect. The first (ŋ̩⁵) is used by the older generations while the second (ʋɯ⁵) is used by younger speakers. The influence of the neighbouring Mandarin is all too apparent.
‡ What’s more confusing is the number 222 (read [liã³⁵ pɐʔ⁵ ɲiɪ¹¹³ n²] in Linhai dialect) which like most Wu dialects makes good use of 廿 for 20. The northern equivalent (rendered in Pinyin style spelling) would be roughly “liang be nei ni”.
҂ As in Plato.

In a comment on the previously mentioned LanguageLog post, commenter Li Yu drops a link for the Wu Association (吴语协会). It’s a great resource and one I linked to for Chinese language pages on Wu. What I didn’t see before now was their downloadable Shanghainese dictionary. It’s available as a PDF, scanned from a text published by Jiaotong University in Shanghai. You can find it by clicking the link above and going to the download center (下载中心) or just get it directly here.

Another gem mentioned by Li Yu is the rather good attempt to come up with a uniform Romanization that would work for all Wu dialects. Each dialect page ends with the poem 咏鹅, “Goose Goose Goose”, by Luo Binwang (骆宾王). Figuring that since I have a native speaker handy, I decided to make a couple quick recordings of the poem. Here’s the Mandarin version:

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鹅鹅鹅，
   É é é,
曲项向天歌。
   Qū Xiàng xiàng tiān gē.
白毛浮绿水，
   Bái Máofú lǜ shuǐ,
红掌拨清波。
   Hóng zhǎng bō qīng bō.

Here is the Changzhou dialect version with transliteration provided by the Wu Association page:

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鹅鹅鹅，
   Ngou ngou ngou,
曲项向天歌。
   Chioh-ghan shian thie kou,
白毛浮绿水，
   Boh-mau vei loh-su,
红掌拨清波。
   Ghon-tsan peh tshin-pou.

I should mention that the speaker had some problems with how a couple things were transcribed, for example 歌 which has been written “kou” but she believes ought to be “gou”. For the record, she’s not from downtown but rather a suburb of a suburb (Wujin) and has a tiny but noticeable difference in her pronunciation. That said, I think she may be right.

I heard about an interesting hiring practice today. Apparently it’s somewhat well known by the locals. Most fast-food places, specifically McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut, will not hire people who are not from the immediate area. The motivation seems to be largely based on mutual understanding.

Today I was talking to somone, we’ll call her Rachel, who’s mother is from Changzhou but married someone from Wuxi, the next city/county over. As such Rachel was born and raised in Wuxi, but now studies and lives in Changzhou. She is equally fluent in both dialects and isn’t detectable as an outsider when talking to people here in Changzhou. But, as the story goes, her national i.d. is marked with Wuxi, and so unless she wants to go through a long process (which if I understood correctly, involves blood draws and DNA testing), she will always be local only to Wuxi.

While in college, she applied to work at one of the many fast-food places downtown. She was told the Wuxi deal wasn’t really a deal at all since she could converse fluently like a native of Changzhou. Two days of flipping burgers later, she was let go. Another manager found out about the Scarlet 夕.

But, pretty much anyone who would go to McDonald’s speaks Mandarin, I though, and they certainly don’t do this sort of thing in the more typical restaurants. Unless a quite elderly grandmother decides to treat her grandson to a nice cold 新地, it seems like this would never really be a problem. And, as any foreigner in China knows, picture menus abound.

I’m pretty tempted to ask about this next time I’m at Starbucks to see if the same applies. I know they’re required to have some basic level of English in order to work there, which makes a bit of sense given the kinds of people I usually see ordering a [insert Starbucks joke drink here].

I then wonder where the line is drawn. I’d assume Wujin is close enough, but I’m not sure about Jintan and Liyang unless it’s based solely on the card.