Studies On Intelligibility And Mutual Intelligibility Among Wenzhou, Quzhou And Wujiang Dialects

Wu Chinese is one of seven major dialect groups in China and is the second largest dialect group next to Northern dialect. Among the90different dialects within Chinese Wu, there’s such a big difference that speakers of different Wu dialects cannot communicate with each other, especially speakers between Southern Wu and Northern Wu.It is a well-accepted fact that one of the typical characteristics of Wu dialects is their poor mutual intelligibility between one and another Wu dialect, which has arrested much linguistic attention.This study is an experimental study on the intelligibility of the three Wu dialects such as Wujiang, Quzhou and Wenzhou, with an attempt to work out the degree of the mutual (un)intelligibility between these three Wu dialects. In the study, the experiment is made in such a way:30words and20sentences are designed for the intelligibility test; they are recorded in the three different dialects; the different recorded spoken forms are transcribed into written forms by subjects from every different dialect after they have listened to the recordings in the different three dialects. Then, SPSS is used to work out the degree of their mutual intelligibility. In other words, the study is to find which dialect is easier to understand or which dialect is more difficult to understand between them than other two dialects.However, the result of the mutual intelligibility test in this study may not be precisely accurate for some uncontrollable factors; yet it presents a relatively objective picture of the mutual intelligibility between Wujiang, Quzhou and Wenzhou, the three Wu dialects. What’s more, the methods for testing and calculating are scientific. This first attempt to make the mutual intelligibility test between the Wu dialects will surely help understand the difference between different Wu dialects, casting some light on examining the mutual intelligibility between different Chinese dialects.This thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One is an overall introduction of previous researches on Wu dialects and intelligibility test. Chapter Two discusses the definition of intelligibility and mutual intelligibility, and describes the state of researches on the intelligibility of Wu dialects. Chapter Three makes a detailed explanation on the design of the research. Chapter Four presents a detailed analysis on intelligibility and mutual intelligibility of Wu dialects on the basis of the results of the research. Chapter Five presents a report of the research after comparing the subjects and results with other researches in the relevant field. Chapter Six presents a conclusion of the thesis and some comments on the experiment.