Phonological Studies Of Hakka Dialects In Hunan Province

In Ming and Qing Dynasty, some of the Hakkas moved from Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi into Hunan. Some of their descendants keep up using Hakka Dialects as the means to communicate with each other in the Hakka villages, while the others have forsaken their own Hakka Dialects and use the local superior ones. Now Hakka Dialects are distributed mainly over some of the mountains in Pingjiang, Liuyang, Liling, Youxian, Chaling, Yanling, Guidong, Rucheng, Anren, Zixing, Yizhang, Jianghua, Jiangyong and Xintian in the Eastern and Southern of Hunan Province. This paper is devoted give phonological studies on the Hakka Dialects in Hunan Province according to my own investigation and a vast amount of historical documents and linguistic references. It contains ten chapters. The first chapter gives an introduction on some concepts such as "the Hakkas in Hunan Province" and "Hakka Dialects in Hunan Province", the meaning and methods of this research, the persons who pronounced for me, and the symbols used in this paper. The second chapter is about where the Hakkas moved from and where they settled down. The third one gives a description of the distribution of Hakka Dialects in Hunan Province, and eight dialectal maps are appended. The phonological systems of 11 dialectal spots are compared in the fourth to seventh chapter. I divide the places where the Hakka Dialects distribute into three areas in the eighth chapter and try to find out the pattern of variations of dialects in the ninth chapter. The last chapter proves that the so-called "Guidong Hua" and "Rucheng Hua" are variations not of Hakka Dialects but of Xiangnan Tuhua.