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.

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.

Hat tip to @soakland who tipped me off to the Wu Culture Festival that begins today in Wuxi. While not specifically language based, I’m sure most of the participants will in fact be speaking in the Wuxi dialect of Wu. Plus there’s the whole thing of shared heritage between the language and the various states called Wu. Here are a couple photos of the performers getting ready. And here is an article from WuxiNews called《吴文化节开幕式合成彩排》that talks a bit more about the rehearsal. And another from Xinhua that my browser assures me contains malware. GhostNet anyone? Unfortunately I won’t be able to make it to Wuxi today, though on another day I’d happily catch a bus out that way. I’d like to hope that 吴文化节 is something we’ll see again.

update: After some quick searching now that it’s officially opened, I’ve learned that this is the fourth such Wu culture festival. Looks like I might be making a trip to Wuxi next year then. If you still plan on going, it lasts until the 16th. The expat site WuxiLife has the schedule in English. Cost of admission is 50RMB. Otherwise there are Chinese descriptions here and here.

I keep meaning to get to Wuxi (and Gaochun and Danyang among others) to get some recordings and search the local libraries. Next week is Shanghai but maybe the week after that I’ll finally get there.

In the meantime, @wuxiandis has filmed four brief lessons available on YouTube that cover some of the basics. It includes some pronouns, basic counting and a few useful phrases. They are spoken by a handful of different people so you can get a better idea of what’s really there. Anyway you can see all the clips at this blog which has them all in one place.

In mostly unrelated news regarding my own documentation, I’ll be heading overseas in about a month and while there will retrieve my tiny digital dictaphone. At present it’s hard to get good snippets of conversations while carrying around my 15″ MacBook Pro opened up to Audacity. That doesn’t mean I’m not trying, because I am, but expect to hear many more samples coming in the beginning of April when I return to my ^*cough* beloved Jiangnan.