Reviewed by Picus S. Ding, Macao Polytechnic Institute

Authored by Margaret Mian Yan, an expert in Chinese dialectology, this book is intended as a textbook for students interested in Chinese dialects. It consists of four chapters, each with a short section of exercises at the end. Numerous tables and fourteen maps appear throughout the volume. Ch. 1 (1–19) provides a general background of the field of Chinese dialects; specifically, how the field was established and why the term dialect is used for all varieties of the language spoken by the Han Chinese. Ch. 2 (20–42) examines the ‘Modern period of Chinese dialectology I’—specifically, studies and surveys that took place in mainland China and Taiwan from 1920 to 1990. Ch. 3 (43–59) is a continuation of the account of modern period of Chinese dialectology but focuses on dialectal projects initiated in the United States.

Ch. 4 (60–237) represents the heart of the volume: a discussion of the major dialect groups. This chapter is divided into eight sections that deal with the Mandarin and Jin dialects, the Wu dialects, the Xiang dialects, the Min dialects, the Gan dialects, the Kejia dialects, the Yue dialects, and the transitional dialects (e.g. Huiyu and Pinghua). Except for the final section, each section covers subgroupings within the particular dialect group, sounds of one or two representative dialect(s) of the group, word-initial and word-final segments, tones, and lexical differences within the dialect group as well as a list of suggested readings. The book ends with a single-page of concluding remarks. After the references, there is a summary of the phonological rules that account for the sound changes in the development of the Chinese dialects. Finally, the book concludes with an index.

This volume accurately reflects the current state of Chinese dialectology. The development of the field is recounted in such detail that possibly every twentieth century study of Chinese dialects—in both Chinese and English—is referenced. Just as readers will appreciate the diversity of the Chinese languages, they may also realize that Chinese dialectology is by and large still in its infancy: the overwhelming number of varieties has delayed a refined multilayer study of the languages (i.e. topolects) and dialects in the Sinitic family. Although mutual unintelligibility between major Chinese dialects can be ‘as great as any two languages within the Indo-European language family’ (2), this book follows the mainstream treatment and regards Chinese as a language with hundreds of varieties called dialects. Consequently, the major dialects are all organized into a single chapter.

It is a pity that there is no section on the syntactic differences of the major topolects, although several comparative works on the dialectal grammar of Chinese are included in the references. It would also be helpful if future editions would provide a table of English glosses for the Chinese data for lexical comparison.