Welcome to GaGiNang Phonetics!

Table of contents
  1. Welcome to GaGiNang Phonetics!
  2. What is GaGiNang Phonetics (GG NP)?
  3. Motivation for GaGiNang Phonetics (GG NP)
    1. Thanks to USC!
  4. GaGiNang Phonetics (GG NP) Roadmap
  5. Introduction
    1. SwaTao Language Family
      1. Clarification: SwaTao vs. Teochew vs. Teochew Proper
    2. Orthography and Transcription
    3. General Approach
    4. Language Resources

What is GaGiNang Phonetics (GG NP)?

GaGiNang Phonetics: /gɑginɑ̃ŋ/ fənɛtɪks/

  • The term GaGiNang, 胶己人，or 自己人 in general, refers to the phrase "Our Own People", the geographical ChaoZhou Region, and the shared cultural identity and unity of the Teochew people
  • Currently, GG NP documents a small portion of the sophisticated phonetics of the SwaTao Teochew Min variety1 for academic linguistic, language documentation, and language learning purposes

Motivation for GaGiNang Phonetics (GG NP)

I am interested in the SwaTao Phonetic Inventory Project for many reasons! Here are a few:

  1. Interesting Phonetic Properties
    1. Teochew has rich Phonetic properties, yet the SwaTao variety seems to have less resources than Teochew in Western literature
      1. Ex: Interesting Tone Type and Tone Category system
    2. I hope that other people (linguists, heritage speakers, curious souls) will be able to use this as a resource to learning and documenting more of Teochew–and perhaps maybe inspire people to be excited about language documentation the way Learn Teochew has inspired me!
  2. Journey to Becoming a Better Linguist
    1. As a fledgling linguist, I wanted to work on a language similar to Mandarin and Cantonese to improve my understanding of linguistics (and one day, hopefully become a great linguist! and maybe even create a unifying theory @Prof. Goldstein)
      1. Hopefully in the future, I can use the skills I gain as a linguist to help make the world a better place
  3. GaGiNang (Our People)
    1. Many of which the people who I care about are a part belong to the Teochew/GaGiNang community. Thus, I wish to learn more about Teochew Language to connect more deeply with other GaGiNangs!

Thanks to USC!

  • Thank you to the Linguistics Department at USC and a thanks to all the peers, mentors, and professors I’ve had the privilege to study under! This wouldn’t have happened without you!
    • Professor Goldstein for being the reason why this project exists!
    • Professor Disner for introducing me to linguistics
    • Professor Iskarous for encouraging the intersection of Computer Science and Linguistics (thus using a Github repo for this website’s development)
    • Professor Simpson for showing me the relationship of linguistics and armies and navies
    • All the people at USiL and the Ling 415 gæ̃ŋ Thanks for being patient with me Jack!

GaGiNang Phonetics (GG NP) Roadmap

Section Description
Introduction (you’re here!) Motivation, Approach/Resources, and Background on SwaTao Language
Consonants Analysis of Consonants
Vowels Analysis of Vowels
Tones Analysis of Tones
Future Investigations Improvements, Limitations, and Future Research Paths
Assets Diagrams, Analysis, and Data Collection Resources and Templates
Phonetic Inventory IPA Charts and Audio for Consonants, Vowels, and Tones

Note: the Phonetic Inventory can always be accessed in the top right corner

Introduction

SwaTao Language Family

The SwaTao (汕头) variety falls under the Sino-Tibetan language family as a Southern Teochew Min (潮州闽) variety. It is one of the main varieties of Teochew which also includes Teochew Proper and other “Northern” and “Southern” Teochew Min.

SwaTao Language Family Tree

Sino-Tibetan
└── Sinitic
    └── Chinese
        └── Min
            └── Northern Min
            └── Southern Min
                └── Teochew
	                └── Teochew Proper
	                └── SwaTao

Clarification: SwaTao vs. Teochew vs. Teochew Proper

  • To reduce ambiguity of when each term is used, the following chart differentiates which name is used for each variety:
Variety Description Use in GG NP
Teochew Refers to the entire family of Teochew varieties including Teochew Proper and SwaTao

 Used in GG NP when the phonetic finding is believed to extend to all varieties of Teochew
Teochew Proper Refers to a variety of Teochew that is standardized which GuangDong Peng'im is based off of

Used by many formal literature and Learn Teochew		 Used in GG NP to describe literature description/transcription when production by native SwaTao speaker differs from literature transcription
SwaTao Refers to a variety of Teochew spoken in the ShanTou (汕头) area of GuangDong

ShanTou and SwaTao are the Mandarin and SwaTao romanization of 汕头 respectively		 Used in GG NP to describe SwaTao when production by native SwaTao speaker differs from literature transcription

Orthography and Transcription

Since Teochew, like many other varieties spoken in Guangdong and China, is no longer officially taught in schools in favor of Mandarin, the writing and transcription system is pseudo-standardized using GuangDong Peng'im. Thus, we will be use two types of orthography and transcription.

  1. Orthography
    1. Teochew Orthography (similar to Mandarin Characters though not always the same)
    2. Mandarin Orthography2
    3. English Orthography
  2. Phonetic Transcription
    1. Teochew Peng'im also known as GaGiNang Peng'im
    2. International Phonetic Alphabet: IPA

General Approach

As I was very unfamiliar with this language, here is the general framework used for probing SwaTao:

  1. Use literature and resources to create a contrastive phonetic inventory
  2. Record a native speaker and asked them for feedback on whether utterances grammatical
  3. Adjust the transcriptions and interpretations based on working with the speaker

Additionally, I tried to learn how to produce some of the segements in order to more easily do the state timing diagrams and Constriction Locations

Language Resources3

  1. Learn Teochew with Ah Boon
    1. Learn Teochew is the primary source for many of the initial transcriptions, phonetic inventories, and grammatical rules. He also has a series of videos describing Teochew proper with IPA.
    2. Many of the transcriptions are based off of his and then modified based on the variety of Swatao the participant in this project speaks.
  2. Mrs. Lisa Li (李丽华夫人) for participating in the data collection and for being
  3. Online Websites
    1. WhatTCSay3 English to Teochew Dictionary
    2. Wikipedia
  4. Online Formant Plotting Tool

  1. What is considered a Language or Dialect is a complex sociolinguistic challenge. Thus, we use the neutral phrase variety to refer to a general way of speaking ↩

  2. As a Cantonese speaker, it was sometimes easier to translate sentences into Mandarin Orthography before creating the English gloss. Also, I hope that any other interested people or Linguistics students may also find this work interested and perhaps benefits from having more glosses. ↩

  3. Huge thanks to Mrs. Li for her patience and help with repeating words and helping to find what utterances provided in the literature were ungrammatical in SawTao. Also, Mr. Ah Boon’s Learn Teochew is an indispensable and inspiring resource for this Teochew language documentation. ↩