1. Raung-fu Chung Southern Taiwan University rfchung@mail.nsysu.edu.tw
2012, 05, 25, NKNU
A study of vowels
Raung-fu Chung
Southern Taiwan University

2. Outline: 1. Introduction a. Hakka: people and languages
b. Hakka and SM: language attitude
2. Vowels: backgrounds
a. vowels and consonants
b. F1 and F2
Vowels in Hakka varieties
a. Methodology
b. Results and discussion
4. Remaining issues
5. Concluding Remarks

3. Hakka：Distribution
1. The only language in the Chinese language family, which is not named according to a province or a historical area e.g. Wu (historical area) Yue (Cantonese)(Province) 2. Hakka has no land of its own：There is no land called Hakka 3. Distribution: Where there is sun, there is Hakka

5. However, most Hakka live in the area of North-eastern Guangdong, Southern Jiangxi, and Western Fujian.

7. In Taiwan, Hakka is a minority
In Taiwan, Hakka is a minority. However, it is almost spoken in very corner of this island. As shown below.

9. Hakka in Taiwan：6 varieties
Northern Sixian: Miaoli
Southern Sixian: Liudui (Kaohsiung nad Pingtung)
Hailu: Shinchu, Taoyuan
Zhaoan: Yunlin
Dapu: Dongshi
Raoping: Taoyuan, Miaoli

11. Some digression: Hakka and Southern Min: their difference in language attitude. In general, both Hakka and Southern Min speakers immigrated almost at the same time. Nevertheless, they are now quite different in many respects:

12. Where SM speakers go, they consider themselves natives of that land, e
Where SM speakers go, they consider themselves natives of that land, e.g. Tainan people, Chia-yi people. In contrast, Hakka cannot get rid of the names of the places where they were from:
Sixian: 4 counties of Guangdong (Xingning, Jiaolin, Pingyuan, and Wuhua)
Hailu: Hai Feng and Lu Feng
Dapu, Zhaoan, Raoping are place names of Mainland China

13. 2. Although there are a lot of varieties of SM, e. g
2. Although there are a lot of varieties of SM, e.g. Zhangzhou, Quanzhou, Tongan, etc, they do not label or mark a certain dialect in their daily communication. What they speak is so-called Taiwanese. Such an ideology is a force for all the varieties to converse for merge into one. It is different in the case of Hakka. Most Hakka think highly of their own accent or variety and deny other dialects.

14. For the time being, it is officially as well as academically accepted that there are 6 varieties of Hakka in Taiwan. In essence, they are not entirely intelligible to each other. From another perspective, we might claim that they are intelligible if they like. As a Southern Sixain speaker, it took me two hours to get the regular correspondence between Sixian and Hailu. From then on, Hailu is intelligible to me, although I can merely speak very little of this variety.

15. Here I would like to show that the six Hakka varieties are not so divergent on the basis of vowels. My study aims to express the idea that Hakka varieties, divergent as they seem in surface, are on the way of becoming a common accent. Given that my study would be focused on vowel qualities, I would like to briefly introduce some related backgrounds.