9 replies to this topic

[mair]

Are the recent migrants from Guangdong? Or were they there for quite some time already?

And, what Cantonese dialect do they speak? Standard Guangzhou or Taishanese? Cheap Gucci ShoesThere are also Mandarin speakers in the north of Guangxi. Were they in Guangxi before or after the Cantonese speakers arrived?

[xng]

Those whose mother tongue is Ping Hua language has been there a long time. Those whose mother tongue is quangzhou or taishanese cantonese are recent migrants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinghua

Edited by xng, 01 April 2011 - 08:41 PM.

[bloodmerchant]

http://zh.wikipedia....ki/粤语方言

But Guangxi has a branch of Cantonese largely endemic to the region called 桂南片 (not so sure how exactly it is close to the rest of Yue Chinese). Any Cantonese dialect that is not of this branch, such as 粵海片 (Guangzhou Cantonese) and 四邑片 (Taishanese) are 'foreign' branches of Cantonese spoken in Guangxi and is likely to be spoken by migrants or descendants of migrants from Guangdong.

Mandarin speakers moved to Northern Guangxi during the Ming and Qing periods, which is why you see a population boom of SW Mandarin speakers in Southwestern China for the large part except for some migrant enclaves such as Wu speakers and Gan speakers in Guizhou or Hakka speakers in Sichuan, for example. I would supposed that Yue and Ping speakers have been in Guangxi for quite a while, before the settlement of Mandarin-speakers, had their own branches of Yue. 桂南片 and Pinghua have been in Guangxi the longest, followed by Mandarin speakers, Taishanese speakers and Guangzhou Cantonese speakers right around the same time period.

Edited by bloodmerchant, 02 April 2011 - 12:30 AM.

[qrasy]

If you are referring to Yue (excluding Pinghua), then they speak several very different types, with very much varying intelligibility.
Wuzhou and Nanning Baihua are close to Guangzhou, highly intelligible. So they should be late migrants (Ming, Qing) from Guangdong.

(now I am basing on "中国语言地图集")
There are also ones classified as Yong-Xun, very similar to Cantonese, after one gets used to the accent (that means, using ears only instead of a systematic comparison) it's basically intelligible.

Qin-lian is most likely not a valid grouping (geographically-oriented), some having little changes and some having big changes compared to Cantonese. Qinzhou is just like different accent, while Hepu is almost like a different language.

The ones classified as "Goulou" are very different. Yulin has the most peculiar changes (e.g. siang -> slaa, *kiau -> tʃau instead of kau), not really intelligible even after a few repetitions. After "adjusting for accents", Rongxian a bit better, but not too intelligible either, and Tengxian maybe half.

Note that Nanning Pinghua and Nanning Baihua are different tongues. I read somewhere about Nanning Pinghua, and saw a significant number of "un-Cantonese" vocabularies in simple expressions (though Nanning Baihua basically agrees with Cantonese).

South Pinghua still sounds somewhat close to Cantonese, maybe only slightly less intelligible than Yulin.
North Pinghua are very different from those, and appears more closely related to "Xiangnan Tuhua" or "Yuebei Tuhua", classified as Guangxi Pinghua maybe only because of the name and province.

Edited by qrasy, 02 April 2011 - 10:17 AM.

[bloodmerchant]

So I assume that the majority of the population were ethnic Zhuang on the onset of mass migrations from Guangdong and other parts of Southwestern China during Ming dynasty? I did hear that there is a small minority of Min Nan speakers in Guangxi.

http://www.ispeakmin...ad.php?tid=5646

Is Guilin Hokkien this close to Zhangzhou Hokkien? This may seem to be the case as 門 is pronounced as 'muoi' rather than 'mng'.

http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=1013766429
It seems that Min speakers are scattered all across Guangxi, in small enclaves.

http://ndltd.ncl.edu...earchmode=basic
Apparently, in Taiwan, some scholars think that Guangxi Min Nan is conservative compared to other Min Nan dialects.

[Andy Lau]

It's really interesting how there are so many Minnan speakers all over Guangdong(northern =Chaozhou and southern tips=Zhanjiang) and Guangxi. Even Hainan's Han majority come from the minnan speaking group. I wonder if Minnan speakers were actually the first Han Chinese that settled in Guangdong, before the Cantonese speaking groups.. because minnan seems to be more older than Cantonese, while cantonese is younger than minnan but older than mandarin: Minnan > Cantonese > Mandarin.

[bloodmerchant]

It's really interesting how there are so many Minnan speakers all over Guangdong(northern =Chaozhou and southern tips=Zhanjiang) and Guangxi. Even Hainan's Han majority come from the minnan speaking group. I wonder if Minnan speakers were actually the first Han Chinese that settled in Guangdong, before the Cantonese speaking groups.. because minnan seems to be more older than Cantonese, while cantonese is younger than minnan but older than mandarin: Minnan > Cantonese > Mandarin.

Min Nan speakers are the most widespread of any Chinese language, from as north as Jiangsu (somewhere around Yixing) to as southwest as Chongqing, Guangxi and of course Hainan. But I believe most Min Nan speakers in Yixing and Huzhou and other places to the north of Wenzhou actually came from Wenzhou, as many of them also happened to speak Wenzhou dialect. They came from Southern Zhejiang to northern Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu during the late 19th century. Most local residents, of course, speak Wu Chinese. I heard Wu speakers are found within a town in Xinjiang and another town in Guizhou, but I assume they came after the 20th century, as many hardly left their homeland prior to that area.
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=867398070

It's more accurate to say that the early ancestor of Min split from Chinese, then the early ancestor of Cantonese split from Late Middle Chinese or Qin Chinese, which ever theory you subscribe to, whether it'd be OC/MC theory or 'Warring States' theory. To say something like 'Cantonese language is the ancestor of Mandarin language' is much like saying that 'monkeys and gorillas are the ancestors of humans', which they are not.

[mrclub]

There are no more Minnan dialect island in Sichuan anymore. Guangxi still has some.

I don't know but I don't think you can say Minnan speakers are the 1st Han Chinese to settle in Guangdong ? Here was the land of Bai Yue.

It seems that Minnan speakers first landed on current Teochew grounds during the Song Dynasty.

And...What do you mean by "Han Chinese" ? Purely people from Han Dynasty ? Or before that ? As far as I heard of, some people from Qin Dynasty resettled in the South too last time.

Edited by mrclub, 03 April 2011 - 12:37 AM.

[Andy Lau]

To Bloodmerchant: What i meant was what you just described (just i didn't go into detail).. Minnan split from Old Chinese, later on Cantones split from Middle Chinese and after that Mandarin split from a much later Middle Chinese (or something like that). So what i kind of mean is that a group of Han chinese (aka Min speakers) migrated from the central plains into the fujian area & via Fujian into guangdong much earlier than the Han Chinese (aka Cantonese) who migrated from Central plains into Guangdong. This is what i am thinking now... or do you think the cantonese speakers were in guangdong before the minnan speakers?

To Mrclub: By Han Chinese = i meant the people who migrated from Central Plains of China into other areas of China (and of course there were some assimilation of locals).

[qrasy]

So I assume that the majority of the population were ethnic Zhuang on the onset of mass migrations from Guangdong and other parts of Southwestern China during Ming dynasty?

I guess you may assume that. But then, before those migrations, there were already some Sinitic Pinghua.
Of course, they are in decline among Chinese after the migrations from Guangdong and other parts of SW China.

I did hear that there is a small minority of Min Nan speakers in Guangxi.

http://www.ispeakmin...ad.php?tid=5646

Is Guilin Hokkien this close to Zhangzhou Hokkien? This may seem to be the case as 門 is pronounced as 'muoi' rather than 'mng'.

While I forgot to bookmark where I saw it, the Minnan in Guangxi was descended from the Minnan in Yunan 鬱南 of Guangdong. There's a dialect island in Liantan 連灘
I don't know if "muoi" by itself can prove that it's closer to Zhangzhou, as Leizhou and Hainan (also in SW Guangdong) apparently have "ui" for that rhyme, too.

http://ndltd.ncl.edu...earchmode=basic
Apparently, in Taiwan, some scholars think that Guangxi Min Nan is conservative compared to other Min Nan dialects.

It's just a few features that are more preservative. Other parts are presumably heavily influenced by SW Mandarin and Yue dialects, and overall I would think that those islands didn't preserve Minnan features very well.

because minnan seems to be more older than Cantonese, while cantonese is younger than minnan but older than mandarin: Minnan > Cantonese > Mandarin.

It's vague as it depends on what you are really thinking when you mention "Oldness".
Does it mean
1. after excluding a few most recent changes, to claim that the remaining features are all preservative
2. to take the whole branch instead of the any representative dialect and see that the most common features are preservative.
3. to trace its ancestors until the common ancestor meet with another branch (i.e. historical split with all other branches)
or what?

Min Nan speakers are the most widespread of any Chinese language, from as north as Jiangsu (somewhere around Yixing) to as southwest as Chongqing, Guangxi and of course Hainan.

You seem to have forgotten the Mandarin branch, from Northern tip of Heilongjiang to Southern tip of Yunnan. (those are no less closely related than Hainan is to Quanzhou)

I don't know but I don't think you can say Minnan speakers are the 1st Han Chinese to settle in Guangdong ? Here was the land of Bai Yue.

I think the first Sinitic speakers in Guangdong spoke an extinct branch of Sinitic, and (keeping the possibility that it's replaced a few times by another Sinitic branch which later went extinct) much later replaced by Yue and Hakka.