This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

Gan ua
贛語/赣语
Gan ua (Gan) written in Chinese characters
Spoken in	China
Region	central and northern Jiangxi, eastern Hunan, parts of Fujian, Anhui, Hubei
Ethnicity	Gan people (Han Chinese)
Native speakers	20.6 million  (1984) (no recent data available)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Gan–Hakka Gan ua
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gan
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Gàn (simplified Chinese: 赣语; traditional Chinese: 贛語; Gan: Gon ua), alternatively Jiangxinese (Chinese: 江西话 Jiāngxī huà; Gan: Kongsi ua) is spoken as the native language by around 50 million people in the Jiangxi province of China, as well as important population in surrounding regions such as Hunan, Hubei, Anhui and Fujian. Gan is a member of the Sinitic languages of the Sino-Tibetan language family and Hakka is the closest language to Gan in terms of phonetics.

Different dialects of Gan exist, and the representative dialect is the Nanchang dialect.

Classification[link]

The classification of Gan is subject to debate. Like all other varieties of Chinese, there is a large amount of dispute as to whether Gan is a language or a dialect. There are three dominant views:

• The first viewpoint considers Gan to be a dialect of Chinese, which is supported by the scholars in mainland China. Actually, Gan and Xiang were carved out of the region of the Mandarin language until 1937 and some Gan speakers consider Gan a dialect of Chinese, mostly owing to political beliefs or nationalist sentiments. Gan has more similarities with Mandarin than with Cantonese or Min.
• Some consider Gan and Hakka one language, “Gan-Hakka”, or a group of languages with Hakka and Cantonese, because there are many similarities among the three.
• Others consider Gan an independent language because Gan is unintelligible with other Chinese languages.

See also: Identification of the varieties of Chinese for the issues surrounding this dispute.

This section requires expansion.

Name[link]

• Gan: the formal name. Scholars in mainland China use Gan or Gan dialect.
• Jiangxinese: the most common name. Since the borders of the language do not follow the borders of the province, this name is not geographically very exact.
• Xi: an ancient name. Now seldom used.
• Right-river language: an ancient name, used because most Gan speakers live in the south of Yangtze River, beyond the right-hand bank when traveling downstream.

Region[link]

The area coloured in light yellow shows the Gan-speaking region in the PRC.

Most of Gan speakers live in the middle and lower reaches of Gan River, the drainage area of the Fu River and the region of Poyang Lake. There are also many Gan speakers living in eastern Hunan, eastern Hubei, southern Anhui and northwest Fujian, etc.

According to the Diagram of Divisions in the People’s Republic of China,^[1] Gan is spoken by approximately 48,000,000 people: 29,000,000 in Jiangxi,^[2] 4,500,000 in Anhui,^[3] 5,300,000 in Hubei,^[4] 9,000,000 in Hunan,^[5] 270,000 in Fujian.^[6]

History[link]

Ancient Ages[link]

During the Qin Dynasty (221 BC), a large number of troops were sent to southern China in order to conquer the Baiyue (百越) territories in Fujian and Guangdong, as a result, numerous Han Chinese emigrated to Jiangxi in the years following. In the early years of the Han Dynasty (202 BC), Nanchang was established as the capital of the Yuzhang Commandery (豫章郡) (this name stems from the original name of Gan River), along with the 18 counties (縣) of Jiangxi Province. The population of the Yuzhang Commandery increased to 1,670,000 (by AD 140) from 350,000 (in AD 2), with a net growth of 1,320,000. The Yuzhang Commandery ranked forth in population among the more than 100 contemporary commanderies of China. As the largest commandery of Yangzhou (揚州), Yuzhang accounted for two fifths of the population and Gan gradually took shape during this period.

Middle Ages[link]

As a result of continuous warfare in the region of central China, the first large-scale emigration in the history of China took place. Large numbers of people in central China relocated to southern China in order to escape the bloodshed and at this time, Jiangxi played a role as a transfer station. Also, during this period, ancient Gan began to be exposed to the northern Mandarin Guan-hua (官話) dialects. After centuries of rule by the Southern Dynasties, Gan still retained many original characteristics despite having absorbed some elements of Guan-Hua. Up until the Tang Dynasty, there was little difference between old Gan and the contemporary Gan of that era. Beginning in the Five Dynasties period, however, inhabitants in the central and northern parts of Jiangxi Province began to migrate to eastern Hunan, eastern Hubei, southern Anhui and northwest Fujian. During this period, following hundreds of years of migration, Gan spread to its current areas of distribution.

Recent History[link]

Guan-hua evolved into a standard language based on Beijing Mandarin, owing largely to political factors. At the same time, the differences between Gan and Guan-hua continued to become more pronounced. However, because Jiangxi borders on Jianghuai, a Guan-hua, Xiang, and Hakka speaking region, Gan proper has also been influenced by these surrounding languages, especially in its border regions.

Modern Times[link]

After 1949, as a “dialect” in Mainland China, Gan faced a critical period. The impact of Mandarin is quite evident today as a result of official governmental linguistic campaigns. Currently, many youths are unable to master Gan expressions, and some are no longer able speak Gan at all.

Recently, however, as a result of increased interest in protecting the local language, Gan now has begun to appear in various regional media, and there are also newscasts and television programs broadcast in the Gan language.

History of Gan^{[citation needed]}

Dialects[link]

There are differences within the dialect speaking region. For example in Anfu county which was categorized as Ji-Cha, there are two main dialects, called Nanxiang Hua (Southern region) and Baixiang Hua (Northern region). People from one region cannot even understand people from the other region if they were not well educated or exposed to the other dialects.

The main dialect areas of Gan in Mainland China.

According to 《Atlas of Chinese languages》(《中國語言地圖集》)(1987), there are 9 dialects in Gan.

Ps: name with * means Gan is partly spoken in this city.

Sounds[link]

Gan (e.g. Nanchang dialect) has 19 syllable onset (聲母), 65 syllable rimes (韻母) and 5 tones (counted as 7 in Chinese classifications).

Vowels[link]

Gan has 6 vowels:

Tone[link]

Like other Chinese languages, tones in Gan make phonemic distinctions. There are five phonemic tones in Gan, which are reduced to two 'entering tones' before stop consonants. In the traditional classification, these are considered separately:

tones of Gan

The 6th and 7th tones are the same as the 4th and 5th tones, except that the syllable ends in a stop consonant, /t/ or /k/.

Initials[link]

In each cell below, the first line indicates IPA transcription, the second indicates pinyin.

Finals[link]

consonantal finals[link]

• The finals in italic are at present only reserved in several Gan dialects.

Example[link]

Grammar[link]

In Gan, there are 9 principal grammatical tenses – initial （起始）, progressive （進行）, experimental （嘗試）, durative （持續）, processive （經歷）, continuative （繼續）, repeating （重行）, perfect （已然）, and complete （完成）.

The grammar of Gan is similar to southern Chinese languages. The sequence subject–verb–object is most typical, but subject–object–verb or the passive voice (with the sequence object–subject–verb) is possible with particles. Take a simple sentence for example: "I hold you". The words involved are: ngo ("I" or "me"), tsot dok ("to hold"), ň ("you").

• Subject–verb–object (typical sequence): The sentence in the typical sequence would be: ngo tsot dok ň. ("I hold you.")
• Subject–lat–object–verb: Another sentence of roughly equivalent meaning is ngo lat ň tsot dok, with the slight connotation of "I take you and hold" or "I get to you and hold."
• Object–den–subject–verb (the passive voice): Then, ň den ngo tsot dok means the same thing but in the passive voice, with the connotation of "You allow yourself to be held by me" or "You make yourself available for my holding."

Vocabulary[link]

• Gan Swadesh list

In Gan, there are a number of archaic words and expressions originally found in ancient Chinese, and which are now seldom or no longer used in Mandarin. For example, the noun ‘clothes’ in Gan is ‘衣裳’ while ‘衣服’ in Mandarin, the verb ‘sleep’ in Gan is ‘睏覺’ while ‘睡覺’ in Mandarin. Also, to describe something dirty, Gan speakers use ‘下里巴人’, which is a reference to a song from the Chu （楚國） region dating to China's Spring and Autumn Period.

Additionally, there are numerous interjections in Gan （e.g. 哈、噻、啵）, which can largely strengthen sentences, and better express different feelings.

Writing system[link]

Gan is written with Chinese characters, though it does not have a strong written tradition. There are also some romanization schemes, but none are widely used. When writing Gan speakers usually use Mandarin, which is used by all Chinese speakers.^[7]

See also[link]

• Old Gan
• History of the Gan language
• Varieties of Chinese

References[link]

• Chen Changyi. Summary of Gan. 
• Chen Changyi. Chorography of languages in Jiangxi. 
• Li Rulong. Investigation of Gan-Hakka. 
• Xiong Zhenghui. Dictionary of Nanchang Dialect. 
• Yan Sen. Division of languages in Jiangxi. 
• Yan Sen. Summary of modern Chinese·Gan. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gan

Gan language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Classification of Gan Dialects
• Ethnologue report on Gan
• Gan Chinese Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)

This article is an orphan, as few or no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to this page from related articles; suggestions may be available. (June 2010)

贾甲

Jia Jia (simplified Chinese: 贾甲; traditional Chinese: 賈甲; pinyin: Jiǎ Jiǎ), born in 1951, Tianjin, a former General Secretary of the Shanxi Provincial Association of Scientists and Technology Experts (Chinese: 中国山西省科技专家协会) before he left China in 2006, during which he was refused political asylum in Taiwan^[1][2]., went to Hong Kong^[3],^[4], Thailand^[5], Malaysia^[6], Indonesia^[7], and was granted political refugee status by UN refugee commission^[8], and accepted by New Zealand as a permanent resident.

Arrested by Chinese government[link]

On 22 October 2009, Jia Jia returned to China arriving at Beijing Capital International Airport from New Zealand, on a mission to bring democracy to the Chinese people. He was arrested at the airport.^[9]

sentenced to jail for 8 years[link]

On 13 May 2011, Jia Jia has been sentenced to jail for 8 years and deprived of political rights for 2 years under the name of ‘subversion of state power’.^[10]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Letter written by Jia Jia's son

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 賈甲