My parents were born and grew up in a village in Duanfen, Guangdong. They speak a mutually intelligible dialect of Taishanese that, irritatingly enough, is very difficult to find information on. Taishanese dictionaries, themselves few and far between, document the pronunciation in the capital of Taishan: Taicheng.

The first document I found includes Duanfen pronunciations a few times, but it doesn’t match up.

Fortunately, I had a stroke of luck when I stumbled upon this second document which documents a lot about the divergences with the Taicheng dialect and the Duanfen dialect from Middle Chinese.

From a brief look, it looks identical to how my parents speak Taishanese except for:

• the loss of <w> after <k> and <g>,
• merger of <ng> and <m>,
• merger of [ɑu] and [ɒu] into [ɒu] for the 豪 and 肴 rhymes,
• the shift from [œV] to [əV] (where V represents a vowel).

The first two have affected other Taishanese dialects as well, as well as Hong Kong Cantonese (and are stigmatised there). The last one may just be a matter of subjective transcription rather than an actual change in pronunciation.

Now, if you don’t mind me, I’ll be busy transferring the information to my document to get a thorough guide to my parents’ Duanfen dialect. It’ll be posted here when it’s ready.