The Development Of Chaoshan Dialect Words In The Past70Years

Since the foundation of People’s Republic of China, under the influence of the rapid development of society, economy and education, the popularization of Mandarin, convenient traffic and frequent contacts among the public, Dialects are getting increasingly close to the Mandarin, so as the development of Chaozhou dialect words, which have changed quite a lot during70years’evolution.This paper makes a study on a book concerning the earliest studies of Chaozhou dialect words by Mr Weng Huidong’s "Chaoshan dialect", which was published in1943. We choose it as the sample of the dialect words spoken in Chaozhou70years ago to make a comparison. The book follows a style of Zhang Taiyan’s "Dialect", so the book, is surely divided into16volumes with totally more than1000entries (a total of11,000words),including’‘释词”,“释言(单字)”,“释言(两字)”、“释言(多字)”,“释言(叠字)”,“释身”,“释亲”,“释宫”,“释食”,“释服”,“释器”,“释天”,“释地”,“释鸟兽”,“释虫鱼”,and“释草木”The entries in this book are about the studies to the normal daily-use words in Chaozhou before the foundation of People’s Republic of China. This paper is using the entries of Mr Weng Huidong’s "Chaoshan Dialect" as a contrast model, taking quantitative analysis as the method to make a research on Chaozhou Dialect words respectively used by the people of new school, who were born in1982to1992, and by those of old school who were born in1952to1962in the urban area of Chaozhou City, with the purpose to evaluate the word evolution in the last70years.The study finally comes to a conclusion that the average change rate of entries of "the Chaoshan dialect" is about27%, and the change rate of the new school is about40%,25%higher than that of the old school. It shows that the changing speed of Chaozhou dialect words tends to accelerate during the last30years. By evaluating the word evolution over the last70years and analyzing the reason and development trend, it also can be found that Chaozhou dialect words change along with the development of the society, and also with the change of Chaoshan people’s material life, cultural life, and thinking mode.