Title

Dialect Changes in Southern Min in Taipei City: An Investigation and Analysis of Social Dialectology

Author

Chen Shu-chuan

Genre

Article

Pages

765-789

DOI

10.6503/THJCS.202312_53(4).0005

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese

Key words

Southern Min in Taipei City, Tong’an-based Southern Min 同安腔, General Taiwanese, dialect levelling

Abstract

There are five subdialects of Southern Min in Taipei City: Old Quanshan 泉山, New Quanshan, Old Tong’an 同安, New Tong’an, and Zhanghai 漳海 Southern Min. We discovered that at least 80% of the words in the “Qing/Geng colloquial 青更白” rhyme group were pronounced as [ĩ] in the Quan-based Southern Min areas. Secondly, the most representative features of Tong’an-based Southern Min are the “Guan/Guan colloquial 關觀白” rhyme group, pronounced as [ũãĩ], and the “Xiong/Gan colloquial 熋干白” rhyme group, pronounced as [ãĩ]. Nonetheless, young people in two areas of Tong’an-based Southern Min no longer use the [ũãĩ] variation in the “Guan/Guan colloquial” rhyme group. As for [ãĩ] in the “Xiong/Gan colloquial” rhyme group, this variation can still be sporadically found in all the other areas. These two rhyme groups might no longer be the criterion for determining whether an accent belongs to Tong’an-based Southern Min in Taipei. Moreover, the tendency of the Southern Min vowel system in Taipei City is towards a five-vowel system without /o/ and /ɔ/ being differentiated. The “Gao/Gao literary 高高文” rhyme group is, as a result, mostly pronounced as [ɔ]. However, this is caused by the restructuring of the vowel system. Finally, contact between the subdialects in Taipei leads to dialect levelling, in which distinctive and marked phonetic features gradually vanish.