A Comparative Study Of The Vocabulary In Chao'an She Language

The She people was one of the ancient people living in the mountain areas amongst Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces. Now they distribute mainly in some of the mountain areas in over 80 counties or cities in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong and Anhui provinces, as well as Fujian. People communicate with each other inside the She people with two languages: more than 1, 200 people called "Huonie" living in the following four counties, Huidong, Haifeng of Luofu mountain area and Boluo and Zengcheng of Lianhua mountain area in Guangdong province speak a language of Miao-Yao family, which are called by scholars the "She language". And the rest 99ï¼…of the She people including those in Chao'an, speak another language, which is called the "She dialect", in order not to confuse with the She language. And in this paper we call both of them the She language. The Chao'an She language mentioned in this paper refers to the language spoken by the She people living in Chao'an County in Chaozhou.The Chao'an She language distributes mainly in the following villages of Chao'an in Guangdong: Shiguping village in Fenghuang town, Wanyao and Shanli village in Guihu, and Ligongkeng village in Wenci. And this paper focuses on the lexicon of Chao'an She language. Through comparison between the She language and the Min, Hakka and Gan dialects and the minority languages around it, the author endeavors to investigate the using actuality of the language, and analyze the laws of language contact and language variation in the development, trying to make an objective identification and conclusion of the language category.There are four parts in this paper. In the first part, the author makes a brief introduction to the cultural, geographical environment and the current language usage situation of the Chao'an She language; also the author analyzes and describes the initial, final and tone systems of the language. In the second part, a list of the classified vocabulary is made. And in the third part, which is also the most important one, a full comparison between the Chao'an She language and other surrounding languages and dialects is done, that is the Chao'an She language between Chaoshan Min dialect, Hakka, Gan and Yue dialects, Dong-Tai languages and Miao-Yao languages. The fourth part is the concluding section. And in this chaptert the paper discusses and analyzes the belonging and category of the language. A conclusion is drawn that from lexicon perspective, the Chao'an She language is a multilayered mixed language, in which the bottom stratum is maintained.