Ningde dialect


The Ningde dialect is a dialect of Eastern Min Chinese spoken in urban areas of Ningde, China, which is a prefecture-level city in the northeastern coast of Fujian province.

Phonology

The Ningde dialect has 15 initials, 78 rimes and 7 tones.

Initials

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Rimes

10 monophthongs:,,,,,,,,
18 compound vowels:,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
15 nasal rimes:,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
26 checked rimes:,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
These 6 nasal rimes tend to merge into nasal rimes ending with coda, and will disappear in future:,,,,,
These 5 checked rimes tend to merge into nasal rimes ending with coda, and will disappear in future:,,,,

Initial assimilation

The two-syllable initial assimilation rules are shown in the table below:
Coda of the Former SyllableInitial Assimilation
Null codaThe initial of the latter syllable may change:
  • , change to null initial or //;
  • , and change to ;
  • and change to null initial or //;
  • , and change to null initial;
  • ,,, and null initial remain unchanged.
Nasal codaThe initial of the latter syllable may change:
  • and change to ;
  • , and change to ;
  • and change to or ;
  • ,, and null initial change to or ;
  • ,, and remain unchanged.
    • checked codaThe former syllable lost its checked coda at first; then, the initial assimilation of latter syllable follow the law above.
    checked coda The Initial of latter syllable change to while the former syllable lost its checked coda

    Tone sandhi

    The Ningde dialect has extremely extensive tone sandhi rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced is not affected by the rules. The two-syllable tonal sandhi rules are shown in the table below :