Speak Wenzhouhua, The Devil’s Dialect | Language
Wenzhou, in China’s Zhejiang province, is renowned for its prolific cultural contributions—and a fangyan that is not for the faint of heart.
A historic cradle of mathematics, Wenzhou (温州) is the ancestral home of a large portion of Europe’s Chinese immigrants, who are said to possess a native talent for business. It was also the only Chinese city designed by Guo Pu, the founder of feng shui, which has made Wenzhou a sought-after travel destination and given it the illustrious chengyu, “Outstanding People, Land of Wisdom (人杰地灵).”
The local dialect, on the other hand, gave rise to the proverb, “Fear not the Heavens nor the Earth, but fear the Wenzhou man speaking the Wenzhou dialect (天不怕，地不怕，就怕温州人说温州话).”
Wenzhou dialect, or Wenzhouhua, has the abrupt tonal changes, gargling glottal stops, and extended vowels that are characteristic of the Wu dialect group (which also includes Shanghainese). However, it’s also known as the “Devil’s Language (鬼话)” because it can seem unintelligible even to those who speak other Wu dialects. This is partly influenced by Wenzhou’s linguistic geography: the province is caught between the southern tip of Zhejiang’s Wu dialect zone and Fujian province’s Min zone (home to dialects such as Hokkien/Taiwanese and Fuzhounese), and bracketed by mountains.
Wenzhouhua is so unique from its Wu cousins that it’s often confused for Korean and Japanese, even by native Korean speakers. But fear not, for here are a few basic rules behind the rich Wenzhouhua heard in Europe’s Chinatowns:
“Hello everyone” or dàjiā hǎo (大家好) becomes dao guna he, with the last word ending with a rising tone
A number of verbs are similar to their Mandarin equivalent: “want” or xiǎng (想) becomes a toneless xie, “eat” or chī (吃) becomes qi, similar to the Wuhan dialect
Question words are also easy to grasp. Mandarin’s ma (吗) becomes a rising mie
The word in Wenzhouhua for shenme or “what?” in Mandarin, is na se
We can combine all these words to create a quintessential Wenzhouhua sentence:
大家想吃吗？吃什么?
If battling the linguistic incarnation of Lucifer begins to take its toll, here are a few sample sentences—provided by a native Wenzhouhua speaker exclusively for TWOC—which will set you on your Wenzhouhua-learning journey.
Hello everyone, my name is Cai Weihao, very happy to meet you all.
Dao guna he, ng jie qie yu e, debie gesan peng jie niedan dao gunam.
大家好，我叫蔡炜浩，很高兴认识你们大家。
Have you eaten yet? Where are you going? I’ll go with you.
Ni qi guo mie? Nan ga nin ki nia gou, ng da ni yiqi kei.
The weather is pretty good today. What do you want to eat? How about I take you there?
Geinei tieqi debie he, ni xie qi na se, ng da ni yiqi kei?
Let’s leave it at that for today; I’m going now. I’ll be back tomorrow.
geinei youxie nanyanr, ng xie jiao ba, manjue zai lei.
Cover image by VCG
On select Fridays, TWOC will be presenting a basic lesson on speaking like a native of a certain region of China.
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