The Study Of Tancheng County Dialect

Tancheng County (historically known as the Kingdom of Tan), located in the southeastern part of Shandong Province, has the record of characters dating as far back as the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Periods . According to the Chinese Language Atlas, Tancheng dialect is one branch of Zhengcao Mandarin in the Central Plains district. Both linguistically and culturally, the study of Tancheng dialect is very necessary and significant. Through field work investigation commonly used in the study of dialect, the author has collected a vast amount of firsthand data. These valuable data not only reflects the colorful life of the local people, most importantly, it also reflects the richness of the local dialect. This paper mainly focuses on the description of some characteristic dialectal words, and in the "notes on the characteristic dialectal words" section, the author uses a large amount of data to reflect the daily life, local customs and folk culture of the local people.This paper also explores the differences of the dialect within the boundaries of Tancheng County by making a contrastive study. These differences are quite obvious in the locals' eye. Just as Bloomfield once said in the Theory of the Language, " regional difference of language in the one area , people the aware one at first and the most sensitive". Tancheng dialect may have different manifestations in different parts of the county which reflect theinfluence of the influential dialect (Mandarin Chinese). The internal differences of Tancheng dialect also, to some extent, reflect the levels of change of the dialect in region. The author hopes that the regional difference can be of any significance to the diachronic study of the dialect.