Soeinam Language

Soeinam language (or Soeinam Chinese, Soeinam, Mandarin: 綏南話, Soeinam: 綏南語 soei1-nam5-ngoe6, IPA: [sœi˥ nam˧˥ ŋœ˨]) is a tonal language derived from Middle Chinese.

Classification and Dialects
Soeinam mainly obtains in South China and is often considered to be close to Cantonese. To be precise, there are more dialects of Soeinam. Any of these dialects is either wester (Soeinam: 西方言 sei1-poeng1-ngian5) or eastern (Soeinam: 東方言 tung1-poeng1-ngian5): Among all dialects, the Wanle dialect (Soeinam: 萬樂口 moen7-lak8-khu2) is often refered to as the standard Soeinam. This article is also based on the Wanle dialect.
 * Western dialects
 * Angyuan dialect (安遠話)
 * Baizhe dialect (白渚話)
 * Qiutian dialect (丘田話)
 * Eastern dialects
 * Wanle dialect (萬樂話)(Regarded as standard Soeinam)
 * Xinzhai dialect (新宅話)

Initials
Initials are consonants in the front of a syllable of a character of Soeinam. There is no consonnt cluster in such language. Soeinam inherited most sounds of Middle Chinese including retroflex and some voiced sounds. Below is the table of consonants of reconstructed Middle Chinese. Undergoing some inevitable sound changes, such as retroflex stops merge with retroflex sibiliants and some other changes: In fact, palatal sibilants can be regarded as palatalized dental ones since they never appear in syllables whose finals contain medial /j/.
 * /ɳ/ merged with /ɲ/.
 * Voiced stops become implosive.
 * Retroflex stops merge with sibilants.
 * /xu/ or */xw/ becomes /ɸ/.

Finals
A final of Soeinam contains medial, nucleus, and coda: 
 * Medial: the glide before the coda. It can be /j/, /w/, or even zero medial.
 * Nucleus: the body of the final, most significant part of it. There are 7 nuclei available in Soeinam: /ɐ/, /ɛ/, /i/, /u/, /ɔ/, /œ/ (a, e, i, u, o, oe respectively), and a zero nucleus.
 * Coda: the ending of a final. It could be an approximant, a nasal, or a stop. Finals containing medials shall receive no approximant coda.

Zero nucleus
Zero nucleus occurs in Soeinam as well as Taiwanese and Cantonese. Similarily, only some nasals (m and ng) can receive zero nucleus. If we look back into Middle Chinese, we can find out that most words with zero nucleus come from 模, 姥, and 暮 rime (recorded in Guangyung, an ancient book about rimes). Here are some examples:

Codae
Unlike Taiwanese and other Min laguages thought to be derived from Proto-Min prior to Middle Chinese but silimar to Cantonese closer to MC, Soeinam has final stops as well but lacks laryngeal one /ʔ/. The coda /ʔ/ in Taiwanese vernacular pronunciation of some words corresponds to different codae in Soeinam as well as Cantonese. For instance:

Tone System


There are at total 8 tones in Soeinam. And their corresponding tone number in romanization: There is no such a clear rule that one could know the contour of the tone merely by considering its name. The tone contour has changed since Soeinam was isolated from (Late) Middle Chinese. Here are the comparison of tones, beware that except for level tones there is no distinction between "dark" and "light" in rising and departing tones in Mandarin, and Cantonese has two kinds of dark entering: Soeinam has the voicing distinction like Taiwanese and Contonese do. All "dark" tones (whose initials are voiceless) in Soeinam receive high-starting tones (high, high rising, high falling, high), whereas those "light" tones receive low-starting tones (low falling, low, low rising, mid). Mandarin, which has the "simplified" version of tone system, has no such feature.
 * Dark level: 1
 * Dark rising : 2
 * Dark departing: 3
 * Dark entering : 4
 * Light level: 5
 * Light rising: 6
 * Light departing: 7
 * Light entering: 8

Tonal Sandhi
Tonal sandhi is common among Chinese languages including Taiwanese, Cantonese, and Mandarin as well. However, the degree of sandhi differs. Among all 3 languges mentioned, Taiwanese changes its tone most. Cantonese does not often change the tone of a word and is more unpredictable. In Mandarin, only a word of rising tone would alter its tone when its preceding another one also of rising tone.

Soeinam, nonetheless, do also alter some of its tones under certain circumstances, but not as often as Taiwanese does. Some rules are still explicit:
 * 1) Within a word, light level tone (21) would become dark rising tone (35) (In western dialects, it would become dark departing tone (51) instead).
 * 2) Within a word, light rising tone (22) would become light level tone (21).
 * 3) Within a word, characters with -p, -t, and -k finals would change their "color". That is, dark entering tone would become light one, vice versa.

Word class
A word (or a morpheme since a character itself can be meaningful) can fall into one of these categories:
 * Pronoun
 * Noun
 * Verb
 * Adjective
 * Adverb
 * Expletive
 * Interjection
 * Ideophone

Flexibility
Akin to other Chinese languages, (some) words are flexible in Soeinam. Take the word 真佯 tsjin1-jang5 for example:
 * 你真佯是人？ nji6 jing1-jang5 sa5 njin5 (Are really a human?) as a adverb
 * 你去查彼的真佯. nji6 khoe3 tsre5 pie2-ti2 (Go and seek his truth.) as a noun

Word order
Under most circumstances, Soeinam obey the rule where the arrangement of words is SVO. All subjects (including a noun, pronoun, or a clause) precedes a verb which precedes another noun, pronoun, or clause. In case where a verb receives more than two objects (one of which is indirect), the indirect one follows the direct one.
 * 彼的手掬花.  pie2-ti2 sjoe2 kuk4 hoe1 (His hands are holding flowers.)
 * 遺我二輪車.  oe3 ngo6 nji7-loen5-tsje1 (Give me a bicycle.)

Aspects
Soeinam adopted a slightly different method of marking the aspect of a verb. Some expletive characters follow a verb to indicate its aspect, although these expletives may sometimes be regarded as adverbs. Take 我食飯 ngo6-zjik8-boen6 "I eat a meal" for instance:

Some comparisons
我曰綏南語.

nga6 giat8 soei1-nam5-ngoe5 (I speak Soeinam.)(outdated)

nga6 xoet8 soei1-nam5-ngoe6 (I speak Soeinam)(revised)

你真佯識綏南語喈？

nji6 tsjin1-jang5 sik1 soei1-nam5-ngoe5 ke1 (Can you really speak Soeinam?)

今日食嗱呵？

kim1-njit8 zjit8 na5 ha3 (What the hell are you gonna eat today?)

全毋知咖.

tsoen5 m5 tsrie1 ka1 (I have no idea at all.)

尚無食飯而辿屘個電辿！

tsjang7-moe5 zjit8 boen7 nji5 sang3 tsi1-ka3 din7-sang3 (Finish your food before playing video games!)

Dictionary
Soeinam Language/Dictionary

But of course, I won't put all of the list there.

Reference
Some pages on Wikipedia can be referenced. Here are also some useful resources:
 * 1) The database of reconstruction of Middle and Old Chinese (also other languages of Modern Chinese)(Chinese)
 * 2) (Put something useful and in English here)