There is a Chinese saying which goes 天不怕，地不怕，就怕温州人说温州话, which translates to ‘Fear not the heavens, fear not the Earth, but fear the Wenzhou resident speaking Wenzhounese’. In Chinese-speaking circles, this language has a reputation for being incomprehensible, such that it has been called the ‘devil’s language’ or a ‘monster’s language’. In history, this language was used by code-talkers and for other military uses in China, much like how the Navajo language contributed to the code-talker system in the United States. With this reputation, I want to see what exactly makes this language unusual amongst the Chinese languages.

Wenzhounese is a language spoken by around 5 million people, most of whom live in Wenzhou, in southern Zhejiang province in eastern China. Belonging to the Wu languages, it has been remarked as the ‘most divergent’ variety of the Wu languages, as with basically every other variety of Chinese. Nevertheless, Wenzhounese has been argued to be somewhat related to languages like Shanghainese, though it is perhaps more related to the Oujiang varieties of Wu. There are three main subvarieties of Wenzhounese, which are the Northern varieties such as Wenzhou and Ouhai, the Southern varieties such as Wencheng and Rui’an, and the Northeastern variety spoken in Yueqing.

Having heard some Shanghainese before, I expected Wenzhounese to sound as gibberish, or perhaps, even more alien to me, even as a Mandarin Chinese speaker, and a learner of some Hakka and Hokkien varieties. And after hearing some Wenzhounese clips, including its Wenzhounese transcription (with Chinese characters) and Mandarin Chinese subtitle translations, I must say that I can understand the sentiment behind the Chinese saying. Some commenters have mentioned that it sounded like someone is speaking Chinese, Korean, and Japanese at the same time, although I did not really get that impression. There were some words that sounded similar to what I have learned in Hokkien, and that was pretty much it. In fact, Wenzhounese actually shares some common features with some Min varieties spoken in Fujian, which Hokkien is part of or related to.

So, what is behind this reputation (or notoriety) that Wenzhounese has?

Firstly, we have to look at the history of the Wu languages, and the features Wenzhounese preserved or innovated over time. Wenzhou is predominantly spoken south of the Yangtze River, a region called Jiangnan (江南, literally ‘river south’) which in early Chinese history, was inhabited by Kra-Dai or Austroasiatic-speaking people groups. These people groups were seen as ‘barbarians’ by the early Chinese, and would have interacted with the Wu-speaking peoples as they settled in the Jiangnan region. As such, some words from Kra-Dai languages could have entered Wu lexicons.

The separation of the Wu languages into the northern and southern branches would have taken place at some point in the Tang dynasty, when the Lushan rebellion contributed to significant migration into the northern Wu-speaking regions. In fact, some varieties of Oujiang Wu were recorded as early as the 13th century. Further migrations into, out of, or around this region would have added literary layers over time, contributing to influences on the Wu languages by other Chinese and non-Sinitic languages. Wenzhounese, being spoken in a relatively isolated region of this part of China at that time, would not have received as much influences from other languages, and hence preserving features of Classical Chinese, from some grammar, to many of its vocabulary terms.

Like most Wu languages, Wenzhounese has a rather complex tone system. Even though it is remarked to have three phonemic tones, there are a further five more predictable tones giving the language a total of 8 phonetic tones. Then again, only some syllables in Wenzhounese words actually carry a tone, altering the tones of the other words in a certain prosodic unit. Additionally, there is a system of tone sandhi, where tones in a word change based on the environment is in. Anyway, in brief, the 8 tones are split into two sets defined by the yīn-yáng split which dates back the Middle Chinese. Each of these sets comprises of four tones called 平上去入 (píng, shǎng, qù, rù respectively). The yáng set is fairly predictable as it depends on the voicing of the initial, while the yīn shǎng always ends in a glottal stop. Thus, it was thought that the yīn píng, yīn qù, and yīn rù would be the phonemic tones of Wenzhounese. Tones also play a role in some grammatical functions in Wenzhounese.

Additionally, unlike Mandarin Chinese, Wenzhounese has a voicing contrast in its initial consonants, meaning that while Mandarin Chinese initial distinguish by aspiration like /k/ and /kʰ/, Wenzhounese contrasts /g/, /k/, and /kʰ/. Nevertheless, with the exception of /m̩/, /n̩/, and /ŋ̍/, the main final consonant in Wenzhounese rimes is /ŋ/.

Some aspects of Wenzhounese grammar are sort of flipped around in contrast to Mandarin Chinese. For example, nouns come before modifiers, and verbs precede adverbs in Wenzhounese. Additionally, to express the perfect tense, the subject-object-verb word order is used instead of the subject-verb-object word order that it normally uses, a feature that can trace its roots back to Old Chinese. Some particles that follow verbs include 过、去、起、落、来、牢、得、and 还.

Further contributing to the eccentricity of Wenzhounese is the influence by non-Sinitic languages like Zhuang and Kam, exmaples of Kra-Dai languages that the Wu languages would have interacted with at some point in their histories. Examples include the word ‘to turn around’, ʔlø¹, which derives from the Zhuang language lu:n². and ‘gap’, guɔ⁴, which can trace back to ke⁶ in Zhuang, and ʔe² in Kam. Other words derive from Old Chinese, such as 箸/dzei/, or ‘chopsticks’, in contrast to 筷子 in Mandarin Chinese, and 蔫/i/, which means ‘stale’.

Some Wenzhounese words are quite unique. Examples include 靠造化/kʰə zə huo/ to mean ‘whatever’, and 盯人睛/teŋ naŋ tseŋ/ to mean ’embarrassed’. But more interestingly, there are some four-syllable-long Wenzhounese words which are formed by reduplication of the third syllable, and it has been remarked as an outstanding feature of the language. Some of them are listed here:

English	Mandarin Chinese	Wenzhounese	English	Mandarin Chinese	Wenzhounese
Ant	蚂蚁	虎眼挪挪	Doll	洋娃娃	洋蜡娒娒
Spider	蜘蛛	丝网蜘蜘	Greedy cat	馋猫	骗吃猫猫
Four-leaf clover	四叶草	蚱蜢酸酸	Cobblestone	鹅卵石	石板卵卵

So, having introduced Wenzhounese to you, do you think Wenzhounese stands as a contender for the ‘weirdest’ Chinese language?

Further reading

Xu, X., Liu, X., Tao, J. & Che, H. (2012) ‘Pitch and phonation type perception in Wenzhou Dialect tone’, TAL 2012 – Third International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, pp 1-6.