| Wenchang | |
| Nativename: | 文昌话 |
| States: | Southern China |
| Region: | Wenchang, Hainan |
| Speakers: | ? |
| Familycolor: | Sino-Tibetan |
| Fam2: | Sinitic |
| Fam3: | Chinese |
| Fam4: | Min |
| Fam5: | Coastal Min |
| Fam6: | Qiong–Lei |
| Fam7: | Hainanese |
| Ancestor: | Proto-Sino-Tibetan |
| Ancestor2: | Old Chinese |
| Ancestor3: | Proto-Min |
| Isoexception: | dialect |
| Glotto: | none |
| Lingua: | 79-AAA-kd > 79-AAA-kdb |
| Notice: | IPA |
The Wenchang dialect is a dialect of Hainanese spoken in Wenchang, a county-level city in the northeast of Hainan, an island province in southern China.
It is considered the prestige form of Hainanese, and is used by the provincial broadcasting media.
The initials of the Wenchang dialect are as follows:
| Stop / Affricate | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| (pronounced as /link/) | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Lateral | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
The semivowels pronounced as /[w]/ and pronounced as /[j]/ are in complementary distribution with pronounced as /[ɦ]/,and may be treated as allophones of the same phoneme.The voiced stops pronounced as //d// and pronounced as //g// occur with only about ten words each.
There are five vowels, pronounced as //i//, pronounced as //u//, pronounced as //ɛ//, pronounced as //ɔ// and pronounced as //a//.The high vowels pronounced as //i// and pronounced as //u// may also occur as medials.
The possible finals are:
| Nasal codas | Stop codas | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a 阿 | ai 爱 | au 后 | am 暗 | an 安 | aŋ 红 | ap 盒 | at 达 | ak 北 | |
| ɛ 下 | ei 事 | eiŋ 英 | eik 益 | ||||||
| i 皮 | iu 手 | in 新 | ip 邑 | it 必 | |||||
| ia 写 | iau 妖 | iam 念 | iɛn 联 | iaŋ 谁 | iap 狭 | iɛt 捏 | iak 菊 | ||
| iɔ 笑 | iom 心 | iɔŋ 用 | iop 涩 | iɔk 育 | |||||
| ɔ 歌 | ɔi 鞋 | ou 侯 | ɔm 栾 | ɔn 春 | ɔŋ 公 | ɔp 合 | ɔt 黜 | ɔk 乐 | |
| u 有 | ui 气 | un 轮 | ut 脫 | ||||||
| ua 娃 | uai 快 | uan 湾 | uaŋ 广 | uat 挖 | uak 廓 | ||||
| ue 话 | |||||||||
| m̩ 毋 | ŋ̍ 嗯 | ||||||||
The Wenchang dialect has six tones on isolated syllabes:
| Middle Chinese tone | |||||
| level (píng 平) | rising (shàng 上) | departing (qù 去) | entering (rù 入) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| upper (yīn 阴) | 44 | 21ʔ | 11 | 51ʔ | |
| lower (yáng 阳) | 33 | 42ʔ | |||