Wiktionary:About Chinese/Wenzhounese

 is a variety of Wu Chinese, spoken by about 5 million people. It is native to Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang, China. Wenzhounese is one of the most divergent modern varieties of Chinese with more than a million speakers, and has been dubbed the "Devil's Tongue" for its unintelligibility, even with Wu dialects in adjacent areas. This page describes the dialect spoken in the urban area of Wenzhou, specifically in.

Tones for single syllables
There are eight tones organized into four groups of two tones. In each group, the voicing of the initial consonant determines the tone: voiceless consonants are dark and voiced consonants are light.

Tone sandhi
Tone sandhi rules in the Wenzhou dialect are complex.

The table below shows the two-syllable tonal sandhi rules; the cells indicate the tone of the two syllables after tone sandhi. A is the dark tone and B is the light tone.

The table is mainly based on 《溫州方言詞典》. Differences in 《温州方言志》 from 《溫州方言詞典》 are noted in parentheses.

Light rising first syllable

 * 被單 - bei35-42 ta33

Dark falling first syllable

 * 桂花 - tɕy42 ho3

Light falling first syllable

 * 地方 - dei11-42 huɔ33

Dark checked first syllable

 * 鐵絲 - tʰi313-11 sz̩33

Light checked first syllable

 * 月光 - ʔn̠ʲy212-1 kuɔ33

Resources

 * For checking the pronunciation of characters: Wu Chinese MiniDict (has rather limited Wenzhounese coverage)
 * http://www.fyan8.com/wzh.htm
 * 《温州词典》（1995）
 * Introduction to the Wênchow Dialect, Montgomery, P. H. S., Kelly & Walsh Limited (1893)
 * 盛金标．《永嘉方言志》（2016） (Google Books)
 * 沈克成、沈迦．《温州话》．宁波出版社，2006． ISBN 9787806028117. Length, 546 pages