Chongqing Hua

Chongqing Hua (Chongqing Dialect) means the language spoken by Chongqing locals living in its main urban areas – there's a big differentiation between its other counties and regions; it belongs to Chengyu (Chengdu and Chongqing) branch of southwestern Mandarin, it represents one of the standard pronunciations in Sichuan Hua, and has more geographic application as compared to Chengdu Hua. As Chongqing has been a city of migrations from ancient times – the ratio of original Chongqing locals is no more than one third; the migration was mainly from Guangdong, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Anhui, and it had absorbed some of their pronunciations into its own language system. Due to the promotion of standard Mandarin, the original Chongqing Hua is spoken less and less by the younger generation.

Chongqing Hua is also called Chongqing Yanzi(er), which has very straight-forward meaning, is easy to follow, and actually many of its phrases are quite amusing.

Yanzi pronunciation samples

Chinese	English	Mandarin Pinyin	Chongqing Hua
街	street	jiē	gāi
解手	go to the toilet	jiĕ shŏu	gǎi sŏu
鞋子	shoes	xié zi	hái zi
咸	salty	xiăn	hán
敲门	knock at the door	qiāo mén	kāo mén
叫花子	beggar	jiào huā zi	gào huā zi
睡觉	go to sleep	shuì jiào	suì gào

Yanzi phrase samples

Chinese	English
要得 yao de	ok
假打 jia da	hypocritical
撇脱 pie tuo	convenient
啥子/ 爪子 sa zi / zua zi	what
晓得 xiao de	I know
巴适 ba si	nice, comfortable
豁我 huo wo	lie to me
踏雪　ta xue	despise
打望 da wang	go see pretty girls
嘎嘎 ga ga	meat
国孽 guo lie	quarrel, start a fight
香音 xiang yin	cheap
唐家沱 tang jia tuo	a place quite far from the city center, it usually is used in a sentence to mean one’s business suffers a big loss
刹一脚 sa yi jio	stop there, pause
说嘞些 suo lie xie	Don’t mention it, no big deal
偷油婆 tou you po	Thief of oil - cockroach
扭到费 niu dao fei	Stubborn, insistent on something
耙耳朵 pa er duo	soft ears – afraid of wife
麻麻鱼 ma ma yu	spicy fish – be cheated
不存在 bu cun zai	It’s ok, doesn’t matter
假巴意思 jia ba yi si	pretend to
巴心不得 ba xin bu de	most desired