Yong'an dialect

The Yong'an dialect (Central Min: 永安事, Mandarin Chinese: 永安話) is a Central Min dialect spoken in Yong'an, Sanming in Western Fujian Province, China.

Yong'an dialect
永安事
Pronunciation	[uã˧ um˧ sia˧˥]
Native to	Southern China
Region	Yong'an, Sanming, Fujian
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Min Inland Min Central Min Yong'an dialect
Early forms	Proto-Sino-Tibetan Old Chinese[a] Proto-Min
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
Linguasphere	79-AAA-hbc
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Phonology

The Yong'an dialect has 17 initials, 41 rimes and 6 tones.

Initials

The initials of the Yong'an dialect are:

	Bilabial	Dental	Palato-alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal / Approximant	m	n ~ l		ŋ
Plosive	p   pʰ	t   tʰ		k   kʰ	ʔ
Affricate		ts   tsʰ	tʃ   tʃʰ
Fricative		s	ʃ		h

• The initials [n] and [l] occur in free variation.
• /m, ŋ/ can also be heard as voiced plosives [b, ɡ] in free variation.
• Palato-alveolar sounds /tʃ, tʃʰ, ʃ/ can also be heard as alveolo-palatal sounds [tɕ, tɕʰ, ɕ] in free variation among speakers.

Rimes

The Yong'an dialect has a rich set of oral and nasal vowels, but allows only -m and -ŋ as a final consonant.

	Open syllable		Nasal coda	Nasal vowel coda
Open mouth	ɹ̩ i a ɔ o ø e ɯ	aɯ ɔu	m am ɔm ãŋ ẽĩŋ	ã õ
Even mouth	i ia iɔ iø ie iɯ	iau	iam iẽĩŋ	ĩ iã iõ
Closed mouth	u uɔ ue ui		um uẽĩŋ	uã
Round mouth	y ya ye yi		ym yẽĩŋ

Tones

The tones are:

	Middle Chinese tone
	level	rising	departing	entering
upper	53	21	35	13
lower	32	43		(> lower rising)

Tone sandhi

The Yong'an 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:

Tone sandhi of first syllable

Original citation tone	Tone sandhi
upper level	lower level
lower level	remain unchanged
upper rising	lower level
lower rising	upper rising
departing	remain unchanged
entering	high level (55)

Notes

1. Min is believed to have split from Old Chinese, rather than Middle Chinese like other varieties of Chinese.^[1][2][3]