THE DIALECTS OF HONG KONG BOAT PEOPLE
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The fact that these four traditional categories have names which often bear no relationship to the actual tone contours in a modern dialect should in no way detract from their great usefulness as standard labels. The desire to put descriptive names on each group for each dialect may have some pedagogical justification but results in unnecessary profusion of terminology when used in cross-dialect study.
The consonants of KS are:
Labials
Dentals
Palatals
Velars
The phonetic values for these consonants in all linguistic environments are similar to those of SC with the exception of /k/ before /u/ where the pronunciation is that of a well-rounded laryngeal stop [q"], and /-at/ which is commonly [-a'] in rapid speech.
Examples of the consonants are:
/pa3/ ‘a handle'
/tol/ 'many'; /pet4/ 'north'
/cit5/ 'to meet'
/kai4/ 'expensive'; /luk2/ 'deer'
/pha4/ 'to fear'
/thui3/ 'thigh'
/chiu2/ 'tide'
/khei2/ 'flag'
/mun2/ 'door'
/lin6/ 'to think of'
/lung2/ 'farmer'
/fen1/ 'a division'
/sau1/ 'to repair'
/hui1/ 'to open'
/lui5/ 'long time'
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