Chengdu-Chongqing dialect

Chengdu-Chongqing Dialect is spoken within central Chongqing, Chengdu and surrounding provinces. Chengdu-Chongqing dialect is a branch of Sichuan dialect. Academically, Chongqing dialects are spoken in main urban area of Chongqing, with one-fifth population of the Chongqing city. In a broad sense, Chongqing dialect is spoken with all districts of Chongqing City. Eg: Tongliang District, Hechuan District, Fuling District, Zhanjiang District, etc. Chongqing dialect its considered as a branch of Southwestern Mandarin. The Chengdu-Chongqing dialect is mutually intelligible with dialects spoken in its satellite districts such Sichuan. But, as all public schools and most broadcast communication in urban Chongqing use Mandarin exclusively, nearly all speakers of the dialect are good at Chongqing dialect and Mandarin. Owing to migration within China, traditional Chongqing dialect is getting similar to Mandarin, many residents of the city cannot speak the local dialect but can usually understand it, and get fluent to it after a few months or years in the area. == History ==

When the Chinese government declared movement to Chongqing during the World War II, Chongqing became the Provisional capital of the republic of China, with migration boosting the population of the city. Chongqing dialect mixes the merits of various local dialects, with wits and humor, gains popularity with its users. == Phonology ==

Tone Chengdu-Chongqing dialect has four phonemic tones: dark level tone, light level tone, rising tone and departing tone. These tones are of same pitch as Sichuan dialects (Minjiang, Renfu, Yajin). Initial The Chengdu-Chongqing dialect in most regions doesn't have tongue retroflex (tʂ group initials), except for Bazhong district and Panxi area (except for Panzhihua), where the consonants of the tongue curling are similar but not the same as Mandarin. Chongqing dialect with 45 districts using it has 20 initials, 5 initials do not exist: , , , , ; Chengdu dialect with 77 districts it using has 21 initials, 4 initials do not exist: , , , . The following is the initial consonant inventory of Chengdu-Chongqing dialect: The vowels in Chengdu are given below: Literary and colloquial readings of Chongqing-Chengdu dialect Affected by Mandarin for a long time, literary and colloquial readings appear in the Chongqing-Chengdu dialect. Colloquial readings are usually the inherent reading style from the ancient Sichuan dialect, mainly appearing in high-frequency everyday communication; literary readings are close to modern Mandarin, normally appearing in written language. The literary and colloquial readings have been developing in the recent decades. However, affected by the promotion of Mandarin Chinese by the Chinese government, literary readings are becoming dominant, and some pronunciations have the tendency to disappear. Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters in Chengdu are shown below. Note: the table is only based on 《成都语音的初步研究》in 1958, the changes of Chengdu dialect in recent years are not considered: == Vocabulary ==

As a branch of Sichuanese, Chengdu-Chongqing dialect is mainly composed of three parts: ancient Ba-Shu Chinese, vocabulary brought by immigrants in Ming and Qing Dynasties, and lingua franca of ancient China. Chengdu-Chongqing dialect is a branch of Sichuan dialect, which is very different compared with other Chinese. Yunnan dialect, which is considered very similar to Sichuan dialect, only shares 58.3% identical words. Sichuan dialect is also influenced by Xiang Chinese and Gan Chinese, the vocabulary of Sichuan dialect is very different from northern Mandarin, with only 47.8% similar vocabulary. For example, “雄起”(xióng qǐ) (meaning to "cheer up"), is a typical Chengdu-Chongqing word that gets popular in China, equivalent to "加油" (jiāyóu) in standard Mandarin. ==References==