Datong Dialect Of Entering

Chinese 1anguage has tones. Tone is the pitch of a voice, which can distingulsh the..meanings in a syllable. In the ndddle ancient tirnes, Chinese had fOur tones cailed as leveltone, rising tone, falling tone and entering tone. The last one, entering tone, has disapPeared in medem PUtonghua (standard Chinese pronunciation), but it still retains in cer-tain dialects.Datong dialect has entering tone which is from classical pronunciation, but has differ-ences from it. There is Ouly one entering tone, which has no distinction betWeen positiveand negative, ending wth a glottal stoP -- ?. In modern Datong dialect, most Of enteringtone syllables retain this tone, a few ones have changed patly or comPletely. In shOrt,entering tone is still retaining steadily in Datong dialect.At the sam tfor, some syllabes change from the other four tones to entering tone.This phenomenon maybe relates to soft voice or is a kind of retaining of entering tone inanc1ent times.Wage is develOPing. In my opinion, the future Of entering tOne in Datong dialectis to change into the other four tones little by little, till to disaPpear totally. This changewiu take a long Peried, so entering tone Wn still be existing in DatOng dialect fOr a longtime.