Sound Research On Hukou Dialect

There are twenty-two initials,in which exist five ancient full-voiced sounds, but no aspirated sound; fifty finals and six tones in Hukou dialect. The full-voiced sounds in Hukou dialect are inclined to be devoiced obviously, Rusheng(入声)finals become less and less, Rusheng codas are gradually disappearing. On Mutation in speech,there are less changes in initials,more changes in finals; there are almost no phonetic tone-variation,but some semantic tone-variations and a lot of grammatical tone-variations in tones. In addition, there are some other sound phenomena in Hukou dialect, for example,syllable merger, Shushengcuhua( 舒声促化) and different pronunciation in written or oral language.In accordance with the sound, Hukou dialect should be divided into two big parts (four small sections). The difference of the sounds is gigantic between the town and the countryside: in Shuangzhong town. there also are some differences between every two parts in the countryside. The differences were caused by other dialects around Hukou County , which are closely interrelated with history evolution, district division and people-to-people exchange.After Liberation, it is convenient to go to Jiujiang City whether by land or water route because of redivision of districts. Jianghuai(江淮) dialect influences the west of Hukou overwhelmingly. Shuangzhong dialect becomes influential dialect of Hukou, the closer some place is to Shuangzhong town, the grester the impact is that its sound receives; on the contrary, the farther,the smaller. On the whole, comparation between Hukou sound and other dialects around Hukou shows: Gan(赣) dialect and Hui(徽) dialect impact on Hukou dialect earlier, however, Hukou dialect is the distantest to Jianghuai dialect but the closest to Wu(吴)dialect.