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=Suzhounese Phonology=

This article is about the phonology of the Suzhou dialect, also known as Suzhounese or Suzhouese. It is a member of the Wu group of Chinese varieties, alongside others such as the closely related Shanghainese and the more distantly related Wenzhounese.

Syllables
Suzhounese syllables consist of an optional consonantal onset, an optional on-glide, a syllable nucleus, an optional consonantal coda, and a tone. Thus, they may be depicted as (C)(G)V(C)T. According to traditional Chinese linguistics, Suzhounese syllables are broken into an initial (or onset) consisting of the optional initial consonant, a final (or rime) consisting of the on-glide (called the medial), the nucleus, and the optional final consonant, and a tone.

Initials
Suzhounese allows for 26 possible initials which may occur at the beginning of a syllable. Some syllables have no initial and are said to have null initial. Like other varieties of Wu Chinese (but unlike Mandarin or Cantonese), Suzhounese maintains the three-way voiced/voiceless/voiceless-aspirated distinction of Middle Chinese. The following is the inventory of initials for Suzhounese as represented in IPA:

Finals
Suzhounese finals consist of three parts:


 * An optional medial (or on-glide) (which combines with the vowel to form a rising diphthong).
 * A syllable nucleus which may be a monophthong, a falling diphthong, or a syllabic consonant.
 * An optional consonantal coda which may be a nasal or a glottal stop.

The possible Suzhounese finals are depicted in IPA in the table below:

Suzhounese finals can end in no coda, a nasal coda, or a glottal stop coda. The realization of the nasal coda may be, , or even nasalization of the vowel. However, this distinction is not phonemically contrastive as it depends entirely on the place of articulation of the vowel in the syllable nucleus. Syllabic consonant and falling diphthong nuclei do not allow for a medial or a coda, and sonorant syllabic consonantal nuclei additionally do not allow for an onset.

Tone
Like other Chinese varieties, Suzhounese uses tone contours to distinguish words, with the number of possible tones depending on the type of initial and final. Traditionally it is analyzed as having seven tones. The Middle Chinese "light rising" (陽上) and "light departing" (陽去) tones have merged, meaning characters such as "to buy" and  "to sell" (Middle Chinese meaX and meaH respectively) are pronounced identically in Suzhounese as. Due to the fact that there are no syllables which allow for any of the 7 tones, the distinction between them is not typically analyzed as phonemic. Generally, voiceless initial syllables that do not end in a glottal stop can only take 3 of the 7 tones, voiced initial syllables that do not end in a glottal stop can only take 2 of the 7 tones, and syllables that end in a glottal stop can only take 1 tone, determined by whether the initial is voiced or voiceless.

Note that the tones of Suzhounese are only realized as in the following table when syllables are spoken in isolation, as Suzhounese has an extensive system of tone sandhi that affects multisyllabic words, which is described in the next section.

The seven tones of Suzhounese align with the tones of Middle Chinese as follows:

Tone Sandhi
Tone sandhi is the system of phonological tone change that occurs in certain phonetic environments. Suzhounese, like other varieties of Wu Chinese, has an extensive and complex system of tone sandhi which affects all multisyllabic words. It operates on the word level, and modifies the tone of most syllables of multisyllabic words based on the underlying lexical tone of the individual syllables and their order within the word.

Two-syllable words
The following table describes tone sandhi on two-syllable words, with further explanation below. Note that following IPA convention, left-pointing tone letters depict underlying tones, while right-pointing tone letters depict surface tones after undergoing tone sandhi.

Initials

 * Voiced stops and sibilants were devoiced; the stops became aspirated in syllables with tone 1 and unaspirated otherwise.
 * Retroflex stops merged into retroflex affricates.
 * Sonorants: retroflex nasal merged into alveolar nasal;, formerly palatal nasal in EMC, became or sometimes the syllable er; velar nasal was dropped.
 * Before high front vowel or glide, velars ("back-tooth" stops and "throat" fricatives) and alveolar sibilants palatalized and merged as a new series of alveolo-palatal sibilants.
 * The glottal stop was dropped; before a high front glide, the voiced velar fricative  was dropped.
 * Labiodentals:, devoiced, merged into ; became . (LMC labiodentals resulted from EMC labials preceding  + back vowel.)

The following table illustrates the evolution of initials from Early Middle Chinese, through Late Middle Chinese, to Standard Mandarin.

Finals
In general, Mandarin preserves the LMC system of medials and main vowels fairly well (better than most other varieties) but drastically reduces the system of codas (final consonants). The systematic changes to medials and main vowels are loss of the chongniu distinctions i/ji and y/jy (which occur in all modern varieties) and loss of the distinction between and. All final stop consonants are lost, and final nasals are reduced to a distinction between and.

The exact changes involving finals are somewhat complex and not always predictable, in that in many circumstances there are multiple possible outcomes. The following is a basic summary; more information can be found in the table of EMC finals in Middle Chinese.

Changes to medials:
 * LMC medial classes and  merge, losing the ; likewise for  and.
 * LMC front medials and  (and corresponding main vowels) are lost after retroflex consonants.  The operation of this change is exactly as for the similar change that occurred after EMC retroflexes. (Note that the difference between EMC retroflex and palatal sibilants is sometimes reflected in the Mandarin difference between e.g. she (EMC retroflex) and shi (EMC palatal).
 * LMC medial is lost after labials, and  unrounds to.
 * LMC medial is sometimes lost after  and.
 * Various other changes occur after particular initials.

Changes to main vowels:
 * Long vowel shortens.
 * Various other complex changes; see Middle Chinese.

Changes to codas:
 * LMC coda becomes.
 * LMC stop codas are dropped, with  sometimes becoming  and.
 * LMC complex codas and  become simple codas; likewise for  and, but often with effects on the preceding vowel.

Tones
A tone split occurs as a result of the loss of the voicing distinction in initial consonants. Syllables with unvoiced onsets get assigned to the upper tones (high level, high falling, medium rising, and medium level). Syllables with voiced onsets get assigned to the lower tones (low falling, low rising, and low level).

A second tone split occurs for syllables with both an unvoiced onset and a final oral stop consonant. Those with short vowels in Standard Cantonese are assigned a high level tone, while those with long vowels are assigned a medium level tone.

For some speakers (primarily in Guangzhou rather than Hong Kong), there is a further tone split in syllables with an unvoiced onset and the Middle Chinese Ping (平) tone (tone 1). Syllables used in concrete nouns are assigned a high level tone, while all other syllables are assigned a high falling tone.

In reading pronunciations, syllables with a voiced onset and the Middle Chinese Shang (上) tone (tone 2) receive the low level tone instead of the low rising tone.

The specific relationship between Middle Chinese and modern Standard Cantonese tones:

V- = unvoiced initial consonant V+ = voiced initial consonant S = short vowel L = long vowel C = colloquial pronounciation R = reading pronounciation