萝卜's Beginner Guide to Sichuanese!
大家好！
Welcome to the first in an unofficial series of posts where I will share the (very large) amount of new vocab, cultural experiences, and topics that I was introduced to while spending ~5 weeks in China!
Today’s topic is: Sichuanese! 🌶️🌶️🌶️
I won’t pretend to be an expert in Sichuanese (yet, please chime in / add here if you are!), but I spent >50% of my time in the province while abroad which gave me lots of exposure. It certainly took me by surprise at the beginning! After about two weeks I started to get a better feel for it. Here’s some tips and vocab for getting started:
1. Get ready to hear 得 (“dei” pronunciation) just about everywhere, this is an essential character thrown around constantly. Most common are these three words:
要得 (yǎodei) – yes, good
没得 (módei) – no
晓得 (xiǎodei) – understand, aka 明白
Sometimes it also just randomly appears, for example 得行 (deixíng) has the exact same meaning as 行 (fine, okay)! You just gotta expect it.
2. The majority of Sichuanese people do not pronounce the “h” in sounds like “ch”, “sh”, “zh”. This makes it very tricky for a student (like me!) who still internally looks up lots of words, so any “s-” word could be a word that starts with “sh-” OR a word that just starts with “s-”. Some examples:
橙汁 (chéngzhī) as "cengzi"
这儿 (zhè’er) as “zer”
什么时候 (shénme shíhou) as “sazisihou”
是不是 (shìbùshì) as “sib’si” (with the u sound in “bu” typically omitted)
3. The “an” sound is pronounced as in the English word “can” (as opposed to the usual pronunciation which is a bit more like the “awn” sound in “yawn”). Combined with (2), this has the very cute effect of turning 吃饭 (chīfàn) into something more like “cifaan”, and is something you should expect to hear a lot in a province like Sichuan! Just be aware that this applies to every “an”-suffixed word and can sometimes totally change how you hear it. In many ways I feel like this feature makes it sound a bit reminiscent of American southern dialects.
4. There are a few other Sichuanese alternative pronunciations to be aware of:
“Hu” is often pronounced as “fu”, leading 护照 (hùzhào) to sound like “fuzao”, or 西湖 (Xīhú) as “xifu”
“R” sounds can sometimes be pronounced with a “y”, e.g. 容 (róng) as “yong”
Most tricky is that the flat 1st tone is very rare, and many characters simply have different tones than “Standard” Mandarin. As far as I can tell (and have read online), there isn’t really a systematic adjustment for this, it’s just how it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
5. Surprisingly, though Sichuan is a southern province, there are tons of erhua around! At least here, it seems like the 儿 ends up quite merged with the original word. Some examples I heard:
米粉 (mǐfěn) as “mifer” (extremely delicious breakfast option!)
老板 (lǎobǎn) as “laober”
没得 (módei) as “moder” (apparently extremely rarely heard though)
豆花 (dòuhuā) as “douhua’er” (quite common in northern Mandarin as well)
熊猫 (xióngmāo) as “xiongmer”
And finally, a few more Sichuanese specialties!
好(多)钱 - how much does it cost, aka 多少钱 (the 多 is sometimes omitted in quick speech)
啥子 (sázi) – what, based on the casual substitute word 啥 for 什么 (also often pronounced as sáza)
闹热 (nàorè) – lively, as opposed to the usual 热闹
可以 (kěyǐ), pronounced as as “kǒyǐ”
冒菜 (màocài) – a local variant of malatang (麻辣烫）
抄手 (chāoshǒu) – (v) to fold arms up the sleeves; (四川) wonton, dumpling
稀饭 (xīfàn) – congee, 粥, literally "thin rice"
干饭 (gānfàn) – regular rice, 米饭, "dry rice" to distinguish from 稀饭
嘛 (ma) - often heard at the end of sentences, just a local sound! Not (as I understand it) generally associated with some of its other meanings (like impatience, stating the obvious, etc)
See you next time. 下次见！
