Dialect fieldwork
BA work on documenting phonetic and lexical variation in Shandong Province, China
Overview
This project involved dialect fieldwork across five regions in Shandong Province, including Jinan (where I did my undergraduate), Jining, Yantai, Heze, and Tai’an. Through structured interviews and wordlist elicitation, I collected spoken data from different local communities. I then transcribed and organised the data using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), focusing on phonetic and lexical variation across regional dialects.
Reflection
Reflecting on this experience, I would not say that phonetic transcription by ear was my strongest skill at the beginning. Listening carefully to subtle sound differences and recording them accurately was often challenging. However, through repeated dialect fieldwork, I gradually became more aware of how speech variation is shaped not only by linguistic structure, but also by culture, geography, history, and local identity. This experience helped me understand why I became interested in language as an undergraduate student: language is both systematic and deeply human. It can be analysed with precision, but it also carries traces of people’s lives, communities, and ways of seeing the world.
Project period
September 2020 – September 2022
Supervision
This project was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Yanfen Zhang.
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Get to know the The Data Collection, Recording, and Display Platform for the Chinese Language Resources Protection Project.