The Chaoshan dialect
Also called the Teochew dialect. Eight tones, and the tones change when syllables run together. Three cities and nine counties, and a speech of its own in each — cross a river and the pitch shifts.
1. Two names, one speech
“Teochew” is the older name. The prefectural seat was at Chaozhou, and the rhyme books, dictionaries and missionary publications all used it: the three rhyme books carry “Teochew sound” and “Teochew speech” in their titles. Missionaries who came in the nineteenth century spelled the language in Latin letters, and that system is called Teochew vernacular script. Overseas communities still say “Teochew”: the Teochew associations and Teochew opera in Thailand and Malaysia use the old name.
“Chaoshan speech” is the newer name, and it spread only once Chaoshan became the ordinary term for the three cities together. Written usage, broadcasting and academic writing now mostly use it; in speech the two names coexist, with the old one holding on in the prefectural city and overseas.
Neither name describes a different language. “Teochew” does not mean the speech of the prefectural city alone, and “Chaoshan speech” does not mean the three cities sound alike. Whichever name is used, the differences between counties are still there.
2. Eight tones and sandhi
The four classical tones — level, rising, departing, entering — each split into upper and lower, which gives eight. Taking Shantou pronunciation, the tone values run roughly: upper level 33, upper rising 53, upper departing 213, upper entering 2, lower level 55, lower rising 35, lower departing 11, lower entering 5. Values differ from place to place; the tone categories are the same.
The rules of sandhi are fixed: the first syllable changes, the second does not. Upper level and lower departing stay as they are; upper entering and lower entering swap; upper departing becomes upper rising or lower level; upper rising becomes lower rising; lower level and lower rising both become lower departing. In a run of three syllables or more, only the last keeps its citation tone.
The most useful consequence is this: record the sandhi along with the tone. A transcription that carries only citation tones reads as written language, not as speech.
The table of eight tone categories, the tone values in six places, and two points in the sandhi table that do not agree, are in the eight tones; how the sound is written — vernacular script, the 1960 romanisation, the international phonetic alphabet — is in romanisation schemes.
3. A speech in every county
The old saying is “one prefecture, nine counties”: Haiyang, Chaoyang, Jieyang, Raoping, Huilai, Chenghai and Puning, with Dapu and Fengshun, which now belong to Meizhou. Each of the nine had its own accent; they are not nine flavours of one speech.
The clearest difference is in tone values. Upper level is 33 in all six places surveyed, so a syllable read in Chaozhou and in Chenghai is nearly identical there. What separates them is the entering tone: upper entering is 21 in Chaozhou and Raoping, 11 in Chaoyang, and only 2 in Shantou, Jieyang and Chenghai; lower entering is 55 in Chaoyang, 44 in Chaozhou and Raoping, 5 in the other three. Lower rising splits in two as well: 313 in Chaoyang, 35 in the other five. When speech across counties sounds like a different tune, it is mostly these points.
Next come word forms and characters. The same object is named differently in different counties, and the same word varies in initial or final. Along the border with the Hakka area — Jiexi, western Puning, northern Huilai — Hakka is spoken too, and words are borrowed in both directions; there the picture is at its most mixed.
So the question “how do you say this in Chaoshan speech” needs a second question first: where. The prefectural city, the port of Shantou, the old town of Jieyang, the old town of Chaoyang, Huanggang in Raoping, are each a line of their own. The prefectural city was long taken as standard because the seat was there; after Shantou opened as a port, Shantou pronunciation spread with broadcasting and teaching, and dictionaries now mostly mark Shantou. Two standards running side by side is the actual situation here.
4. Old words and loanwords
The dialect keeps older Chinese features plainly. One character carries many senses: 食 covers eating, drinking, sipping, sucking — 食烟 smoke, 食酒 drink wine, 食水 drink water, 食蔗 chew cane. Words such as 东司 (latrine), 姿娘 (woman), 起厝 (build a house), 书册 (books) are common in texts of the Qin, Han, Tang and Song.
Grammar keeps old layers too: 鸡公, 鸡母, with the modifier after the noun, is generally taken to be a trace of older Yue word order.
Another layer is loanwords. From the Ming and Qing onward Chaoshan people went to Southeast Asia and took up Malay words: 斟 (kiss), 洞角 (walking stick), 罗山 (biscuit), 吗淡 (police), 巴萨 (market). These few words are the migration written into the language.
5. How to record it
There are three systems of notation, each with its use: vernacular script, for old dictionaries and missionary publications; the Chaozhou romanisation issued by the Guangdong education department in 1960, for modern dictionaries and teaching materials; the international phonetic alphabet, for field recording and papers. The three are not mixed in one document — half the tones marked with digits and half with diacritics leaves the reader unable to tell what is what.
Sandhi has to be recorded with the tone because it follows the phrase, not the syllable. The same syllable as first or as last carries a different value; in Chaozhou, Jieyang and Chenghai a syllable can change two ways, depending on what follows. Record one form and half the pronunciation is missing.
Pages here are written in Chinese characters, with notation only where it is needed, and the system named. What is marked is the sound as recorded, not a sound derived.
Note on sources
Tone values, sandhi rules, old vocabulary and loanwords come from articles on the sound system of the Chaoshan dialect and its “standard”, from dictionary entries on Teochew, and from the table of tone values by place in the Wikiwand entry.
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Last revised: 4 November 2026