Taishanese (simplified Chinese: 台山话; traditional Chinese: 台山話; pinyin: Táishān huà; Jyutping: toi4 saan1 waa2), alternatively romanized in Cantonese as Toishanese or Toisanese, in local dialect as Hoisanese or Hoisan-wa, is a Yue Chinese dialect native to Taishan, Guangdong.

Even though they are related, Taishanese has little mutual intelligibility with Cantonese. Taishanese is also spoken throughout Sze Yup (or Siyi in the pinyin romanization of Standard Mandarin Chinese), located on the western fringe of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, China. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, most of the Chinese emigration to North America originated from Sze Yup (which includes Taishan).^[1] Thus, up to the mid-20th century, Taishanese was the dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in Chinatowns in Canada and the United States. It was formerly the lingua franca of the overseas Chinese residing in the United States.^[2]

The earliest linguistic studies refer to the dialect of Llin-nen or Xinning (traditional Chinese: 新寧; simplified Chinese: 新宁).^[3] Xinning was renamed Taishan in 1914, and linguistic literature has since generally referred to the local dialect as the Taishan dialect, a term based on the pinyin romanization of Standard Mandarin Chinese pronunciation.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]} Alternative names have also been used. The term Toishan is a convention used by the United States Postal Service,^[10] the Defense Language Institute^[11] and the 2000 United States Census.^[12] The terms Toishan, Toisan, and Toisaan are all based on Cantonese pronunciation and are also frequently found in linguistic and non-linguistic literature.^{[13][14][15][16]} Hoisan is a term based on the local pronunciation, although it is not generally used in published literature.^[17]

These terms have also been anglicized with the suffix -ese: Taishanese, Toishanese, and Toisanese. Of the previous three terms, Taishanese is most commonly used in academic literature, to about the same extent as the term Taishan dialect.^[18][19] The terms Hoisanese and Hoisan-wa^[20] do appear in print literature, although they are used more on the internet.^[21][22]

Another term used is Sìyì (Sze Yup or Seiyap in Cantonese romanization; Chinese: 四邑; lit. 'four counties'). Sìyì or Sze Yup refers to a previous administrative division in the Pearl River Delta consisting of the four counties of Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Xinhui. In 1983, a fifth county (Heshan) was added to the Jiangmen prefecture; so whereas the term Sìyì has become an anachronism, the older term Sze Yup remains in current use in overseas Chinese communities where it is their ancestral home. The term Wǔyì (Chinese: 五邑), literally "five counties", refers to the modern administrative region, but this term is not used to refer to Taishanese.

Taishanese originates from the Taishan region, where it is spoken. Taishanese can also be seen as a group of very closely related, mutually intelligible dialects spoken in the various towns and villages in and around Siyi (the four counties of Toishan, Hoiping, Yanping, Sunwui, transcribed from Cantonese; the names "Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Xinhui", as above, are romanized from Standard Mandarin using Pinyin).

A vast number of Taishanese immigrants journeyed worldwide through the Taishan diaspora. The Taishan region was a major source of Chinese immigrants through continental Americas from the late-19th to mid-20th centuries. Taishanese was the predominant dialect spoken by the 19th-century Chinese builders of railroads in North America.^[23] Approximately 1.3 million people are estimated to have origins in Taishan.^[24] Prior to the signing of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which allowed new waves of Chinese immigrants,^[25] Taishanese was the dominant dialect spoken in Chinatowns across North America.^[20]

As of 2015^[update] Taishanese is still spoken in many Chinatowns throughout North America, including those of San Francisco,^[26] Oakland, Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Vancouver, Toronto, Chicago, and Montreal by older generations of Chinese immigrants and their children, but is today being supplanted by mainstream Cantonese and increasingly by Mandarin in both older and newer Chinese communities alike, across the continent.^{[citation needed]}

Taishanese is a dialect of the Yue branch of Chinese, which also includes Cantonese. However, due to ambiguities in the meaning of "Cantonese" in the English language, as it can refer to both the greater Yue dialect group or its prestige standard (Standard Cantonese), "Taishanese" and "Cantonese" are commonly used in mutually exclusive contexts, i.e. Taishanese is treated separately from "Cantonese". Despite the closeness of the two, they are hardly mutually intelligible.^[27][28][29]

The phonology of Taishanese bears a lot of resemblance to Cantonese, since both of them are part of the same Yue branch. Like other Yue dialects, such as the Goulou dialects, Taishanese pronunciation and vocabulary may sometimes differ greatly from Cantonese. Although Taishan stands only 60 miles (100 km) from the city of Guangzhou, they are separated by numerous rivers, and the dialect of Taishan is among the most linguistically distant Yue dialects from the Guangzhou dialect.^[30]

Standard Cantonese functions as a lingua franca in Guangdong province, and speakers of other Chinese varieties (such as Chaozhou, Minnan, Hakka) living in Guangdong may also speak Cantonese. On the other hand, Standard Mandarin Chinese is the standard language of the People's Republic of China and the only legally allowed medium for teaching in schools throughout most of the country (except in minority areas), so residents of Taishan speak Mandarin as well. Although the Chinese government has been making great efforts to popularize Mandarin by administrative means, most Taishan residents do not speak Mandarin in their daily lives, but treat it as a second language, with Cantonese being the lingua franca of their region.^{[citation needed]}

There are 19 to 23 initials consonants (or onsets) in Taishanese, which is shown in the chart below in IPA:

1. The respective nasal onsets (/m/, /n/, and /ŋ/) are allophones of the pre-nasalized voiced stop onsets (/ᵐb/, /ⁿd/, and /ᵑɡ/). The velar nasal (ŋ) sound occurs in both syllable initial and syllable final positions. There is a tendency toward denasalization for initial /ŋ/ as in 耳 /ŋi/ [ŋɡi] ‘ear’, 飲/饮 /ŋim/ [ŋɡim] ‘to drink’，魚 /ŋuy/ [ŋɡui] ‘fish’ and 月 /ŋut/ [ŋɡut] ‘moon’. In words like 牙 /ŋa/ ‘tooth’ and 我 /ŋoy/ ‘I; me’, denasalization does not seem to take place. In syllable final position following the rounded vowel [o], /ŋ/ is usually modified by lip-rounding. Examples are: 東 /uŋ/ ‘east’ and 紅 /huŋ/ ‘red’.
2. The palatal sibilants (/t͡ɕ/, /t͡ɕʰ/, and /ɕ/) are allophones of the respective alveolar sibilants (/t͡s/, /t͡sʰ/, and /s/) when the first vowel of the final consonant is high (/i/ and /u/).
3. The palatal approximant (/j/) is an allophone of the voiced fricative sibilant initial (/ʒ/).
4. The palatal approximant (/j/) can be a semivowel of the vowel /i/ when used as a glide.
5. The labial-velar approximant (/w/) can be a semivowel of the vowel /u/ when used as a glide.

There are about seven different vowels in Taishanese:

1. The closed front vowel (/i/) can be a palatal approximant ([j]) as a semivowel.
2. The closed back vowel (/u/) can be a labial-velar approximant ([w]) as a semivowel.
3. The rounding of the schwa /ə/ is variable.

The final consonant (or rime) occurs after the initial sound, which consists of a medial, a nucleus, and a coda. There are three medial (or glides) in Taishanese that occur after the initial sound: null or no medial, /i/, or /u/. There are five main vowels after the medial: /a/, /e/, /i/, /u/, and null or no vowel. There are nine main codas at the end of the final: null or no coda, /i/, /u/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /p/, /t/, and /k/.

Taishanese is tonal. There are five contrastive lexical tones: high, mid, low, mid falling, and low falling.^[5] In at least one Taishanese dialect, the two falling tones have merged into a low falling tone.^[31] There is no tone sandhi.^[10]

Taishanese has four changed tones: mid rising, low rising, mid dipping and low dipping. These tones are called changed tones because they are the product of morphological processes (e.g. pluralization of pronouns) on four of the lexical tones. These tones have been analyzed as the addition of a high floating tone to the end of the mid, low, mid falling and low falling tones.^{[8][31][33][34]} The high endpoint of the changed tone often reaches an even higher pitch than the level high tone; this fact has led to the proposal of an expanded number of pitch levels for Taishanese tones.^[5] The changed tone can change the meaning of a word, and this distinguishes the changed tones from tone sandhi, which does not change a word's meaning.^[4] An example of a changed tone contrast is 刷 /tʃat˧/ (to brush) and 刷 /tʃat˨˩˥/ (a brush).

The writing system is Chinese. Historically, the common written language of Classical Literary Chinese united and facilitated cross-dialect exchange in dynastic China, as opposed to the spoken dialects which were too different to be mutually intelligible. In the 20th century, standard written Chinese, based on Mandarin, was codified as the new written standard. As Taishanese is primarily used in speech, characters needed specifically for writing Taishanese are not standardized and may vary. Commonly seen alternatives are shown below.

The sound represented by the IPA symbol ⟨ɬ⟩ (the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative) is particularly challenging, as it has no standard romanization. The digraph "lh" used above to represent this sound is used in Totonac, Chickasaw and Choctaw, which are among several written representations in the languages that include the sound. The alternative "hl" is used in Xhosa and Zulu, while "ll" is used in Welsh. Other written forms occur as well.

The following chart compares the personal pronouns among Taishanese, Cantonese, and Mandarin. In Taishanese, the plural forms of the pronouns are formed by changing the tone,^[35] whereas in Cantonese and Mandarin, a plural marker (地/哋/等 dei6 and 们/們 men, respectively) is added.

• Varieties of Chinese
• Cantonese culture

Notes

• Stephen Li. "Taishanese Language Resources". Retrieved 2015-01-05. Taishanese Resources Website
• Stephen Li. "Toisanese Chop Suey 台山话杂碎". Retrieved 2015-01-05. Taishanese Language Blog
• Aaron Lee. "Four Counties 四邑". Retrieved 2015-01-05. Taishanese Language Blog
• C.J. Chow. "Learn Taishanese (台山話)". Archived from the original on 2014-12-17. Retrieved 2015-01-05. You can download the Defense Language Institute's 'Chinese-Cantonese (Toishan) Basic Course' audio and text material here
• Chinese Character to Taishanese Lookup tool Archived 2016-10-19 at the Wayback Machine
• Gene M. Chin. "Hoisanva Sites" Archived 2019-11-09 at the Wayback Machine. Alphabetical Dictionary and Lessons.