A year ago, two American sociologists set out creating a website that documents the myriad dialects and accents to be found around China. Since then, over 400 people with different dialects have uploaded their recordings and they’ve been put into an extraordinary interactive map.
The website, Phonemica, seeks to preserve endangered dialects by collecting stories, folk songs and fairy tales from Chinese speaking regions around the world.
The website’s contributions come from volunteers and there is no field work; people make their own recordings of themselves, family and friends and send them in to the website.
The two founders, Kellen Hansen and Steve Parker are hoping to expand the project to other language groups in the future. Check out the project at http://phonemica.net/
Source: guangcha.cn
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Keywords: Phonemica Project Creates Interactive Map of Chinese Dialects
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The CCP would like the people to believe that all Chinese speak one language. Althought all chinese read and write the same characters, only 900 million can carry a conversation in Mandarin. All of my students are really surprised to hear this. But then realize it is true when I ask them what language do the speak to their grandparents. Or what language do they speak outside the classroom.
Jul 04, 2014 23:11 Report Abuse
I am amused by the fact that it took two Americans to do this. So much for the Chinese caring for their heritage.
Jul 02, 2014 08:32 Report Abuse
If Standard Mandarin (Spoken in BJ) is the "Emperor's Mandarin", then the emperor must have had some speech impediment or retardation due to the choppiness and grittiness (i.e. RRARRRRAARRR) of it.
Jul 01, 2014 20:30 Report Abuse
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