Contents

Tianjin dialect

Mandarin dialect spoken in the city of Tianjin

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Chinese. (June 2011) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Chinese article. Machine translation, like DeepLorGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 294 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Chinese Wikipedia article at [[:zh:天津話]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|zh|天津話}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

The Tianjin dialect (simplified Chinese: 天津话; traditional Chinese: 天津話; pinyin: Tiānjīnhuà) is a Mandarin dialect spoken in the city of Tianjin, China. It is comprehensible to speakers of other Mandarin dialects, though its greatest deviation from the others lies in its individual tones, and the lack of retroflex consonants. The regional characteristics make the dialect an important part of the Tianjin city identity, and sharply contrasts with the dialect of nearby Beijing, despite relatively similar phonology.

The Tianjin dialect is classified under Jilu Mandarin, a subdivision of Mandarin Chinese dialects also spoken in Hebei and Shandong provinces.^[1] Despite Tianjin being a neighbor of Beijing, its dialect sounds very different from the Beijing dialect, which is the basis for Standard Chinese.

The tones of the Tianjin dialect correspond to those of the Beijing dialect (and hence Standard Chinese) as follows:

The differences are minor except for the first tone: Where it is high and level in Beijing, it is low and falling in Tianjin. All words with the first tone, including the name "Tianjin", are affected, giving the Tianjin dialect a downward feel to people from Beijing.

The Tianjin dialect also includes four tone sandhi rules, more than the Beijing dialect. They are,

1. Tone 1 + Tone 1 → Tone 3-Tone 1: 天津 tiān jīn is pronounced /tǐanjīn/ (using Pinyin tone diacritics)
2. Tone 3 + Tone 3 → Tone 2-Tone 3: 水果 shuǐ guǒ is pronounced /shuíguǒ/ (as in Standard)
3. Tone 4 + Tone 4 → Tone 1-Tone 4: 現在 xiàn zài is pronounced /xiānzài/
4. Tone 4 + Tone 1 → Tone 2-Tone 1: 上班 shàng bān is pronounced /shángbān/^[2][3]

There are some other patterns that differentiate the Tianjin dialect from the Beijing dialect. One is the pronunciation of 饿 (餓) as wò (臥) instead of è.

Lastly, the Tianjin dialect lacks the retroflex consonants (捲舌音) prevalent in Beijing, not unlike Taiwanese Mandarin. Thus, zh (ㄓ) becomes z (ㄗ), sh (ㄕ) becomes s (ㄙ), ch (ㄔ) becomes c (ㄘ), and r (ㄖ) becomes y (一) — that is, 人 is pronounced yěn instead of rén, and 讓 is pronounced yàng (樣) instead of ràng. However, the use of the -er (儿) diminutive is common in the Tianjin dialect, as it is throughout the north and northeast. (See: Erhua.)

Chinese speakers commonly stereotype the Tianjin dialect as aggressive- or confrontational-sounding, though it is not difficult for speakers of other Mandarin dialects to understand.

• List of Chinese dialects

• Li, Qian & Chen, Yiya & Xiong, Ziyu (2019). "Tianjin Mandarin". Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 49 (1): 109–128. doi:10.1017/S0025100317000287{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link), with supplementary sound recordings.