ภาษาไคเฟิง

Kaifeng Mandarin (开封话) is a Zheng-Cao subgroup variety of Zhongyuan (Central Plains) Mandarin spoken by ~5M people in and around Kaifeng, Henan. Kaifeng was the capital of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) — the largest city in the world at the time — and its speech preserves an important early-Mandarin stratum: the historical Middle Chinese entering tone (rusheng) has merged into yinping ˨˦ for voiceless initials (unlike Beijing, where rusheng dispersed across all four tones), and the 4-tone system (yinping ˨˦, yangping ˦˨, shangsheng ˥˧, qusheng ˧˩˨) is shared in broad outline with Zhengzhou and other Zhongyuan dialects. Like other Henan varieties it preserves the /tsʰ/-/tʂʰ/ distinction less rigidly than Standard Mandarin and has a productive diminutive 儿 -er suffix (轻声 light tone).