Wiktionary:About Chinese/Nanjing

Nanjing Mandarin (南京話／南京话 (Lánjìnhuā)) belongs to the Jianghuai group of Mandarin (江淮官話／江淮官话). Nanjing Mandarin was the standard Chinese dialect during the Ming and the Qing dynasties.

On Wiktionary we adopt the conservative dialect, which is the practice of all 7 sources. These two sources document the innovative dialect as well, but are limited to individual characters: .

There are a number of differences between the so-called "conservative dialect" (老派) and "innovative dialect" (新派), as demonstrated below:

1. 尖團合流／尖团合流: in the innovative dialect, under the presence of the glide /-i-/, the alveolar consonants merge into the alveolo-palatal consonants.
2. 平翹音／平翘音: in the innovative dialect, the retroflex series is merged into the alveolar series except for the two rimes /ʐ̩, ʐ̩ʔ/.
3. The two finals /ã, uã/ in the conservative dialect are split into four rimes /an, ɑŋ, uan, uɑŋ/ in the innovative dialect.
4. The initial /l-/ in the conservative dialect are split into two initials /l-, n-/ in the innovative dialect, which is predictable based on the final, but the sources disagree on which finals give which initial.

There are a number of differences between the sources that document the conservative dialect:

1. The vowels /y/ are merged into /i/ in two sources, which affect the finals /y, yĩ, yʔ/. On Wiktionary, we keep them distinct.
2. The three finals /ie, iẽ, ieʔ/ have the /-i-/ glide conditionally deleted in two sources. On Wiktionary, we keep the glide.
3. The final /əʔ/ is realised as /ɛʔ/ in four sources. On Wiktionary we use /əʔ/.

A modified version of Hanyu Pinyin is used on Wiktionary. All pinyin rules apply.

Nanjing Mandarin has 21 initials, including the zero initial:

Nanjing Mandarin has 49 finals, including 3 syllabics, but not including various finals created by erhua.

Nanjing Mandarin has 5 tones, which are represented by 5 diacritics. Apart from that, toneless syllables exist, which are not marked by any diacritic. The pre-combined characters are provided here for easy copy-and-paste purpose.

Nanjing Mandarin has tone sandhi, where the first syllable can modify its tone based on the second syllable in a compound, and the second syllable retains its original tone. When displaying, only the original tone is displayed.

These are generally the same as pinyin:

1. ü becomes u before j,q,x,y. e.g. 局 (jůq).
2. With the zero initial, i- becomes y-, u- becomes w-, and ü- becomes yu-. e.g. 衣 (yì), 五 (wǔ), 玉 (yū).
3. For finals with long and short forms, i.e. uei/ui, iou/iu, uen/un, the long form is used for zero initial (with rule 2), and the short form for non-zero initials. e.g. 油 (yóu), 九 (jiǔ).
4. The diacritic is placed on the first vowel letter, unless the first vowel letter is i/u/ü and another vowel letter follows, in which case the diacritic is placed on the second vowel letter. This applies to ii as well, where the diacritic is placed on the second i. e.g. 自 (ziī).
5. Note that ii exists because 自 (ziī) and 祭 (zī) have the same initial.

Use |m-nj= in {{zh-pron}} using the romanization system as described above. Spaces and capitalisation are allowed.

南京 with |m-nj=Lánjìn:

西瓜 with |m-nj=sìguà (sandhi):

Erhua can create rimes that are different from just the original syllable + r. In that case, use > to indicate the result of erhua.

明兒個／明儿个 with |m-nj=ménr>mérgo: