Author(s)

Hongmei Wang

Corresponding Author

Hongmei Wang

Abstract

Dialect is a living fossil of regional history and culture, and also an important material for us to study language variation and change. Regional dialect is a microcosm of regional culture. The change of dialect can help us understand the change of cultural factors. China's unique linguistic conditions and geographical features provide a broad space for dialect research. As a focus of sociolinguistics, the contact between regional dialects and mandarin has attracted the attention of Chinese scholars. The origin and development of the study of language variation are of profound significance to sociolinguistics and the study of Chinese dialects. Through the "ongoing changes" to investigate the evolution of dialect changes. The study of this paper shows that in the process of contact with mandarin, dialects in different regions have changed at three levels: on the phonetic level, the frequency of using initials and finals of dialects in different ages decreases with age, and the degree of borrowing mandarin pronunciation decreases with age. On the vocabulary level, the recognition rate and frequency of dialect words decrease with age, and the borrowing of words from mandarin is more obvious with age. On the grammatical level, the use of dialect characteristic grammatical structure decreases with age.

Keywords

Language Variation; Regional Dialect; Socio Linguistics; Dialect Vocabulary