User:Ruoan/Hangzhou dialect

History
In recent years, with the standardization of Mandarin, the vitality of Hangzhou dialect is decreasing. As Kandrysawtz concluded, Hangzhou dialect is spoken in less places and by less people, especially the younger generation. Some people also hold the attitude that Hangzhou dialect is not appropriate in official occasions.

Geographic distribution
Hangzhou dialect is mainly spoken in the urban area in Hangzhou, including the urban area of Gongshu district, Shangcheng district, Xiacheng district, the urban area of Jianggan district, the urban area and 7 villages of Xihu district, and part of Binjiang district.

Phonology
According to Simmons(2003), Hangzhou dialect has the features of Wu dialects in terms of phonology. There is a three-way voicing/aspiration contrast in initial stops and affricates.

Hangzhou dialect is characteristic of the -er suffix. This is absent in most of Wu dialects.

Grammar
The study on the grammar of Hangzhou dialect is mainly focused on morphology. According to Rong Li (1998), there are 3 characteristics of the grammar of Hangzhou dialect: 1. Hangzhou dialect is influenced by other dialects, especially Beijing Mandarin and Shaoxing dialect. 2. Hangzhou dialect has distinguishing features in phonetics, including some words against the literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters. 3. Part of Hangzhou dialect lexicon is the same as the lexicon of Huzhou dialect and Jiaxing dialect. Part of Hangzhou dialect lexicon is the same as the lexicon of Beijing dialect.

Jieli Lv and Qiuli Gu (2011) believe that Hangzhou dialect has a mix of southern Chinese dialects' grammar and northern Chinese dialects' grammar. But it is still classified under Wu Chinese. It just shares some features with Mandarin Chinese.

Hangzhou dialect has syntactic features and many grammatical particles found in Mandarin dialects.