re: dialects of Hakka

["Dylan W.H. Sung" <mabr12@dial.pipex.com>]

Hi Ewen,

My names Dylan, and I wrote a FAQ on Hakka romanisation a little while ago.
I am a speaker of HK Hakka.

Well done for going to Guangdong to experience Hakka people. Indeed the
Hakka sounds different further north of Hong Kong, as it does in Taiwan
also. Its akin to listening to
London/Mancunian/Liverpudlian/Glaswegian/Welsh speakers of English. All
sounding rather different. Mainly, in Hakka, the tones are to blame for the
differences. My sister and brother-in-law went to Taiwan for a holiday not
long ago and they were told in Mandarin they were in a Hakka area. Feeling
confident she starting talking in Hakka, and when the replied, none of the
locals were making much sense.

Forgive me, if I am covering anything you already know in the next bit...

Tones are an extension to the rather limited set of sounds in any of the
Chinese dialects. So you can say "ga" in several ways and they all mean
different things. Pitch levels called contours are used to differentiate
the set of 'ga' sounds from each other, and usually placed between two
forward slashes /~/. An arbitary set of five pitch levels is used to
describe the variations in pitch, rather like a musical stave. The highest
frequency pitch is number 5, and the lowest is number 1. So a pitch contour
which stays level could be any one of /11/, /22/, /33/, /44/, /55/. The
pitch could start off at a high pitch and fall /42/, start at a low level
and rise /15/, or vary in some way, /214/. 

It is usual in the literature to distinguish between certain endings, and
their tone categories. There are the Ru types which only end in -p -t -k,
and all the rest (three of these called Ping, Shang, and Qu) which have
vowel and nasals -m, -n and -ng endings.
In Hakka there are generally only 6 tone (but 7 for the Hailu), and the
confusing thing is that these tones are numbers themselves. However, they
are not enclosed between any slash. So for the above example, 

Ping  tone 1   su1   books, to loose
Ping  tone 2   su2   potatoes
Shang tone 3   su3   to use, hands
Qu    tone 4   su4   to count, word
Ru    tone 5   suk5  to shrink, younger paternal uncle
Ru    tone 6   suk6  cooked/not raw, familiar with

Lets look at the Zhongshan (ZS) Hakka dialect, which has the following
tones contours

1 /24/   2 /11/   3 /42/   4 /55/   5 /1/   6 /5/

One Hong Kong (HK) Hakka dialect has the following

1 /33/   2 /11/   3 /32/   4 /53/   5 /3/   6 /5/


If we compare tone 1, we see that though ZS is a rising contour whilst HK
is level. The sounds also start and end at different levels.

Tone 2 is the same for both, 
Tone 3 is essentially the same, since both have a falling contour.

Tone 4 has ZS as a high level pitch, whilst in the HK dialect, it is a High
falling contour.

Tone 5 starts at a low pitch in ZS, whilst the it begins at a mid region in
HK.

Tone 6 is the same.

>From the above, half the tones are essentially different in pitch when
spoken. Since the tone pitch with one subdialect do not vary greatly far
the vocabulary much, when hearing different pitches in another Hakka
dialect, it gets interpreted as some other word, which makes it confusing,
and different, or worst, nonsense.

This is only part of the story. There are also differences which are seen
in the pronunciation of words, most notably where HK has -au (rhymes with
"cow") other dialects are seen to have -o (rhyming with "more"). The
initials consonants are also slightly different from place to place, as in
English (NB r trilled and untrilled).

I hope the above makes sense. Its the pitch at which the words are said and
sometimes the pronunciation (and also some local slang) which makes HK
Hakka different when meeting other sounds from sister dialects of Hakka.

Just one more set of contours for you to work out yourself. Its one of many
Taiwanese ones, but it has 7 tones instead of 6. The Ru tones associated
with endings -p -t -k are marked with a *. Note there are 2 QU tones,
representing a high and low difference.

PING     PING     SHANG    QU       QU       RU      RU
1 /41/   2 /55/   3 /13/   4 /21/   5 /11/   6 /45/  7 /32/ 

Shatoujiao (HK) to compare from above
1 /33/   2 /11/   3 /32/       4 /53/        5 /3/   6 /5/

Well thats probably sorted then.... Clocks go forward an hour for BST.

Dylan.