People have long joked, 天不怕地不怕只怕四川人说普通话 – there is nothing to fear but the Sichuanese speaking Mandarin, and it can be true…
With a large lack of retroflex sounds (ch, zh, sh, etc.), confusions on h/f, n/l, s/c initial consonants and n/ng, en/un, ian/uan finals, it can be difficult for even those who have learned Mandarin for many years to understand and to be understood by people in Chengdu or further afield in Sichuan province.
Indeed Sichuanese remains the 8th most spoken language in the world, spoken in some form by approximately 200 million people. The language is funny, energetic and extremely satisfying to learn. Sam Bowden, who is passionate about this beautiful language put together an Introduction to Sichuanese last year and will be sharing some of his favourite Sichuanese phrases over the next few months.
乖
guai1
cute
哦哟，你的娃儿长得好乖哦！
Wow, your kid is so cute!
哦，是不？谢谢哈！
Oh, yeah? Thanks!
歪
wai3
fake
Do you think the stuff at Chunxi Road is all fake?
晓不得，你谨慎点儿嘛
I dunno, you’d better be careful.
哪个
la3 go4
who(?)
电视头那个帅哥是哪个哟？
Who’s that handsome guy on the TV?
他哇？那是马云𠮿!
Him? That’s Jack Ma, of course!
解手
gai3 sou3
(to) go to the bathroom
来不及了！我要去解手！
I’m busting! I gotta go to the bathroom!
你那儿草丛头去解嘛！
Go on the grass over there then!
Tone Guide
Tones in Sichuanese are also different to text book Mandarin. Every city, village, town will also have its own little variations. Some tones start higher, others lower, some don’t drop and some don’t rise. There is a methods of using ‘tone values’ to distinguish Sichuanese tones, which you can read more about at pricklyash.org.
Sam Bowers | PricklyAsh.org
More information from language curious founder of Sichuanese platform PricklyAsh official WeChat account and app at contact@pricklyash.org.
Sam is passionate about preserving and conserving Sichuanese language materials.
