The Swatow dialect, or in Mandarin the Shantou dialect, is a Chinese dialect mostly spoken in Shantou in Guangdong, China. It is a dialect of Chaoshan Min language.[4] It is similar to and largely mutually intelligible with the Teochew dialect.
Phonology
Shantou dialect has 18 initials, 61 rimes and 8 tones.
Shantou dialect has extremely extensive tone sandhi rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced is not affected by the rules. The two-syllable tonal sandhi rules are shown in the table below:
Tone sandhi of first syllable
Original citation tone
Tone sandhi
dark level 33
23
light level 55
21
dark rising 53
35
light rising 35
21
dark departing 213
55
light departing 11
12
dark entering 2
5
light entering 5
2
Notes
^Min is believed to have split from Old Chinese, rather than Middle Chinese like other varieties of Chinese.[1][2][3]
References
^Mei, Tsu-lin (1970), "Tones and prosody in Middle Chinese and the origin of the rising tone", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30: 86–110, doi:10.2307/2718766, JSTOR2718766