General Chinese - Onsets and Rhymes - Tones - Dialectical Correspondences

Dialectical Correspondences

The realization of the tones in the various varieties of Chinese is generally predictable; see Four tones for details. In Beijing Mandarin, for example, even tone is split according to voicing, with muddy consonants becoming aspirates: ba, pa, ma, bha → bā, pā, má, pá (and mha → mā). Going tone is not split, and muddy consonants become tenuis: bah, pah, mah, bhah → bà, pà, mà, bà. Rising tone splits, not along voicing, but with muddy-consonant syllables conflating with going tone: baa, paa, maa, bhaa → bǎ, pǎ, mǎ, bà. That is, bhaa and bhah are homonyms in Beijing, as indeed they are in all of Mandarin, in Wu apart from Wenzhounese, in Hakka, and in reading pronunciations of Cantonese. Entering tone is likewise split in Beijing: mat, bhat → mà, bá.

However, the realization of entering tones in Beijing dialect, and thus in Standard Chinese, is not predictable when a syllable has a voiceless initial such as bat or pat. In such cases even syllables with the same GC spelling may have different tones in Beijing, though they remain homonyms in other Mandarin dialects, such as Xian and Sichuanese. This is due to historical dialect-mixing in the Chinese capital that resulted in unavoidably idiosyncratic correspondences.

In Yue, there is a straightforward split according to consonant voicing, with a postvocalic ⟨h⟩ in Yale romanization for the latter. Muddy onsets become aspirates in even and rising tones, but tenuis in going and entering tones: ba, pa, ma, bha → bā, pā, māh, pāh; baa, paa, maa, bhaa → bá, pá, máh, páh; bah, pah, mah, bhah → ba, pa, mah, bah; bat, pat, mat, bhat → baat, paat, maht, baht. In addition, there is a split in entering tone according to vowel length, with Cantonese mid-entering tone for short vowels like bāt, pāt. In reading pronunciations, however, rising tone syllables with muddy onsets are treated as going tone: bhaa → bah rather than → páh. There is also an unpredictable split in the even ping yin tone which indicates diminutives or a change in part of speech, but this is not written in all Cantonese romanizations (it is written in Yale, but not in Jyutping).