The Húkǒu language, casually spoken | Wikitongues

[@solomontsai8589]

Hi guys! I hope Wikitongues sees this comment. I am Solomon, the recorder of this video. The video description includes a transcript in Standard Chinese. Considering that not all of you may read Chinese, I have prepared an English transcript, as follows: “Hello, friends, good evening. My name is Solomon Tsai, and I am currently an undergraduate studying linguistics at a university in the United Kingdom. Today, I want to introduce you to a dialect called Hukou. Hukou is a dialect spoken in Hukou County in the northern part of Jiangxi Province, as well as in the surrounding villages. Although Hukou County is under the jurisdiction of Jiujiang City, Hukou dialect belongs to the Changdu dialect of Gan language. However, Jiujiang dialect belongs to Mandarin, a branch of Jiang-Huai Mandarin. Therefore, the dialects of Hukou and Jiujiang are mutually unintelligible. This is very interesting because Hukou and Jiujiang are relatively close, but the languages are really not mutually intelligible. My relatives, on my mother's side, also speak the Hukou dialect and cannot understand Jiujiang dialect, it's almost incomprehensible. “But today, I want to tell the audience a little story, a philosophical story about life, called 'The Rotten Pear.' It's about a person who bought a box of pears, but because of the hot summer weather, was worried the pears would rot. So, what did this person do? He thought, eat a pear every day. He wanted to eat them all before they all rotted. His method was to pick a pear that was almost rotten to eat every day from the box. Not the good ones, but the almost rotten ones. Day by day, he ate a pear, finding that he was really foolish after finishing. All he ate were the almost rotten ones, not a single good one. Foolish, right? “Another person saw how foolish this was, to support eating the nearly rotten ones without eating the good ones, and was inspired to write a couplet. The first line says, 'Leave the good ones to eat the rotten ones.' The second line says, 'After eating the rotten ones, the good ones rot.' The horizontal scroll then reads, 'Forever eating the rotten ones.' So, what does this mean? If a person only thinks about the unhappy things every day, that person will be unhappy every day, depressed, and gloomy, not bright. But if this person doesn't choose the rotten ones but the good ones to eat, regardless of whether they rot, if they rot, buy a box, it's not like there's no money. Ah, eat the good ones, think of good things, be happy every day, be bright every day, life will always be brilliant. Oh, the story of 'The Rotten Pear' is related to the philosophy of life. So, friends, do you understand this philosophy, is this story interesting, hehe. “Although, my Hukou dialect is not very good because I am not native to Hukou. But my mother, my grandmother, and relatives from there speak Hukou dialect more. So I grew up listening to Hukou dialect almost every day. So, I understand Hukou dialect, but I don't speak it very well. It's more influenced by the national language, Mandarin. But the spread of Mandarin is not like... not the same. The distribution of Hukou dialect is not as wide as Mandarin. Hukou dialect is a dialect, a less dominant dialect, a vulnerable one. People should protect this dialect and not let it disappear. Because, the frequency of use of Hukou dialect is decreasing generation by generation. Young people are unwilling, or even unable, to speak Hukou dialect. Older people can speak it, but young people speak Mandarin, not Hukou dialect. This situation is not very good, it would be better to conserve this language, that would be the right thing to do. So, today I talked about Hukou dialect, Hukou language. I hope next time to talk about some other languages with you, friends. Thank you.” (Solomon Tsai is a Linguistics student studying at the University of Cambridge. He is currently pursuing the second year of his degree, and is interested in areas of phonetics, phonology, morphology, language typology, and computational linguistics. He would like to mention that this dialect straddles a dialect border between Gan and Mandarin, and there is notably a lot of Mandarin influence especially in Solomon’s own idiolect.）

[@fenghualiu2653]

nb 👍

[@kellyroyds5040]

Every language lost is a loss of a culture

[@hunterstuff9570]

Hello! Would I be able to ask you more about Hukou?

[@solomontsai8589]

@@hunterstuff9570yes sure! What would you like to ask about?

[@hunterstuff9570]

@solomontsai8589 ah! does it have its own romanization system? also, would it be possible to talk somewhere else? or

[@user-ww4wt5hm3l]

Super interesting! I don't think I've heard Gan before...Mandarin words and phrases keep jumping out with different tones, and then there are whole unintelligible sentences with unfamiliar phonemes. Thanks for documenting this and to the speaker for sharing!

[@Wikitongues]

Thanks for watching!

[@ReiKakariki]

❤❤❤❤

[@CivisCaeli]

💜

[@petsmart1000]

I wish there were captions, in other languages so we knew what he is saying. 😊

[@solomontsai8589]

Hi! I’m Solomon, the recorder of this video. I will be putting an English transcript in the comments - i hope wikitongues will pin it!

[@manga4774]

​@@solomontsai8589 yay!!

[@petsmart1000]

@@solomontsai8589 oh that would be wonderful. The language that you speak sounds so lovely and I hope to hear more from you. 😊

[@shadyboy-c3k]

I was looking for any similaities to hokkien but couldnt find any

[@keatsiann]

nice thank you

[@solomontsai8589]

Hii! Thank you

[@totot99]

Should get the elderly to speak it

[@MrAllmightyCornholioz]

BUDDHA BLESS THIS MAN

[@solomontsai8589]

Thank you!

[@MrAllmightyCornholioz]

@@solomontsai8589thanks for the vid! 🙏 ☸️ 阿彌陀佛

[@ReiKakariki]

Very close to fujianese and influenced by this and taiwanese too.❤ The phonology and accent is pacient, humble, explicative and gentle. Reminds me a lot the styles of taiwanese and fujianess talking and s🔊 ❤🎉

[@talkingkangaroo4934]

This is very different from the Minnan dialects in Fujian and Taiwan. It is much closer to mandarin.

[@ReiKakariki]

The Chinese linguist who argues that the Hukou dialect is closer to Fujianese, Taiwanese and Minan than to Beijing Mandarin is Professor Chen Shouyi. He carried out comparative studies that highlight this proximity. He is enrolled in the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

[@talkingkangaroo4934]

@@ReiKakariki Maybe, but I don't hear it in this sample recording.

[@ReiKakariki]

@@talkingkangaroo4934 The record is only the description and presentation of idiom. The studies and searches you'll find in others sites,channels,blogs. Another extensive topic, other thing, more deeper.

[@HarryGuit]

I learned Mandarin and I can understand him. So it doesn‘t seem to be a separate language but rather a dialect.

[@solomontsai8589]

Thanks for your comment! I think this might be due to this dialect straddling the influence of Mandarin, Wu, and other Chinese languages. Classifying a language under a geneology is a hard job! It was just starting from the latter half from the last century, that the concept of Altaic as a language family is starting to be rejected. You might be onto something: some Chinese scholarship I’ve read did mention a classification difficulty of some dialects in Chang-du Gan, and especially my dialect. I’m glad you understand the way I spoke! Speaks to a lot of the commonalities between different varieties.