Intelligibility of Central Sui GC Intelligibility of Southern Sui SY

8.5.1 Intelligibility of Central Sui GC

Results of the GC Central Sui RTT are shown in figure 8.2. Sui speakers from Central, Western, Yang’an and two of the Eastern datapoints achieved scores of over 91 when listening to the GC RTT. Renli RL participants scored slightly lower, on average 86, perhaps because Renli is geographically the furthest away fom the Central Sui area. The scores of Southern Sui participants were varied. SW and JQ scored averages of 94 and 87 respectively, whereas JR and SY both in Libo county, the southernmost points in the Southern dialect area scored under 75. Southern Sui speakers in Libo county struggle somewhat to understand Central Sui GC lect. Pandong dialect speakers clearly cannot understand Central Sui GC very well at all. Both regions scored less than 55. Overall, though, Central Sui GC is the most widely understood lect across the Sui region. Figure 8.2. Comprehension levels for Sandong GC sentences. Both TZ and JR showed standard deviations over 10. This means that there was a particularly wide range of individual scores at these two locations and that the average result is not so reliable. When the RTT score is particularly low, as in the case of JL and PD listening to the GC test, a higher standard deviation is common, and these two datapoints are no exception. The remaining twelve test points have standard deviations below 10, indicating that the results were relatively consistent and are more reliable.

8.5.2 Intelligibility of Southern Sui SY

Results of the SY Southern RTT are shown in figure 8.3. Only SY participants themselves achieved an average of higher than 85. Average results from the other Southern Sui datapoints were 82, 80 and 77 for SW, JQ and JR respectively. Apart from SD Central, who achieved 78, results of people from other dialect areas mostly ranged from 50 to 64. PD, geographically the furthest away from SY, only scored an average of 31. Figure 8.3. Comprehension levels for Southern SY sentences. These results suggest that very high comprehension of the SY lect is limited to areas very close geographically to SY. 7 We guess that JR Libo county may have better coverage over the whole Southern Sui area since its pronunciation chapter 5, sections 5.2.3 and 5.4.7 and vocabulary see chapter 6, sections 6.3.3.2 and 6.4.4 are more representative of the Southern dialect area as a whole. The standard deviations for the SY RTT results were slightly higher than for the GC test see above, possibly because average scores were generally lower. We consider the TZ results unreliable due to the extremely high standard deviation. Some of the participants in TZ were upper middle school students due to a shortage of other people available to take part in the test. These students probably had a higher level of contact with other dialects than those participants who had only been to a local first or middle school.

8.5.3 Intelligibility of Yang’an Sui LW