Talk:昨晚

Taishanese

@Chagneling You wrote that it's du instead of the expected dau (based on dɔu in Stephen Li's romanization). Is there some reason for that? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:52, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

@Justinrleung I honestly have no idea what it should be—to me, it's pronounced too fast for me to properly tell what vowel(s) it has. Without any other Taishanese resource mentioning the pronunciation with the -k assimilation, may as well go with dau4. Chagneling (talk) 07:23, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

@Justinrleung So... after about four months of sporadic activity on my part, I've stumbled upon this page again and looked it up in the 台山方言字典. Looks like they list 昨 as having two pronunciations (photo here):

• dok4 when used in 昨天, 昨夜, 昨晚
• dam4 when used in 昨晚

• for this entry, they state that 昨晚 corresponds to Standard Chinese 昨天 "yesterday"

I'm not sure if by listing 昨晚 under both dok4 and dam4 means that they're just variant pronunciations, or if whether 昨晚 means "yesterday evening" or "yesterday" depends on pronunciation. Personally I'd lean towards the former since 昨晚 can mean both "yesterday evening" or "yesterday" for my dialect.

There's no information on whether 晚 would have a rising tone in this dictionary unfortunately. For me, 昨晚 would have the changed tone applied [man215], but when it's used in a compound (昨晚黑 "yesterday evening/night(?)" is the only one I'm aware of) it wouldn't have changed tone [man21]. I'm not sure about other regions of Taishan so I considered putting in both just in case. However, this brings with it a problem: there's far too many pronunciations (six) listed as a result.

Do you see any good way to handle this here? I ultimately opted to add only the changed tone versions to save space, but I wonder if there's a better way. Chagneling (talk) 09:10, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

@Chagneling: Here's what I've found in 珠江三角洲方言詞彙對照 for Taishan (Taicheng):

• 昨天 (yesterday): □晚 tam²¹ ᵐban³⁵, □日□ tam²¹ ᵑɡit²¹ tɤ⁵⁵
• 昨天晚上 (last night): □晚 tam³¹ ᵐban³⁵

Note that 珠江三角洲方言詞彙對照 doesn't distinguish between different changed tones; it just has a 35 tone for the changed tone. I'm not sure about the difference in tone for 昨 (21 vs. 31); it might be a mistake, so we can probably stick with 21 per Deng Jun. These data here confirm that 晚 should have a changed tone normally in Taicheng. They also imply that dok4 is not used in colloquial speech, i.e. it's a literary reading, just like zok3/zok6 would be for standard Cantonese; this might mean we would have dok4 man4 (without tone change, but I can't confirm this). I'm starting to doubt whether we should include Stephen Li's pronunciation. It seems too far from the Taicheng dialect. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 13:50, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: I'm afraid I lost the URL for 珠江三角洲方言詞彙對照 (it would be fantastic if you could send me it :D), so I'm not sure if 31 is listed by them as one of the tones for Taishanese. Probably a typo, though.

As for Stephen Li, I did find the assimilated pronunciation he gave a bit problematic. My best guess would be that he was under a similar situation to the one that led me to write "du" instead of "dau" (or "dam" for that matter) -- I speculate that he might have just inferred what the vowel sound in the assimilated 昨 would likely be. With how good his dictionary entries are in general, I was somewhat reluctant to bring this up as an issue myself. However, I wouldn't mind removing Stephen Li's pronunciation, seeing that the "dam" pronunciation is backed up by two separate resources. Chagneling (talk) 07:17, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

@Chagneling: Here's a link I found for 珠江三角洲方言詞彙對照. Their 31 is our 32 (tone 5), so I don't know if it's a mistake in the 昨天晚上 column. I do agree that Stephen Li's dictionary is definitely a great resource for Taishanese, but it seems like his dialect is slightly different from the Taicheng dialect (i.e. Taicheng -ei vs. Stephen Li -i; -au vs. -ou). I'll probably remove dau4 man4 and dau4 man4* for now just to be safe. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 07:43, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

@Chagneling: I've also taken dok4 man4* out because I'm not sure if 晚 has a changed tone. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 07:46, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: Thanks for the link! I must have misremembered, since upon reading it I realised it was one of the documents from a while back that in fact I had trouble finding online at all.

On second thought, I'm not sure whether their 31 in 昨晚 is a mistake either. It sounds like it could very well be a variant, I think? I agree with the removal of dok4 man4* for the time being, though.

Oh, and also, I understand this is a lot to ask, but would you happen to have a digital copy of the other two parts of the survey as well? I'd be very grateful, considering the difficulty of finding an online copy. Chagneling (talk) 22:33, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

@Chagneling: I do have a copy of the first volume, but Xiaoxuetang's database has the same data and it's much easier to search. I haven't bothered to look for the third volume though. I'll tell you if I find it. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 22:57, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! Quietly saving a copy... Wyang (talk) 06:47, 18 November 2017 (UTC)