Abstract: The difference among Chinese dialects is mainly reflected in phonetics,which can be quantitively analyzed by calculating the phonetic differences of Chinese characters in different regions.The Chinese syllables commonly consist of three parts: initials,finals and tones.The initials are usually consonants or zero initials,which can be described in four dimensions including pronunciation position and pronunciation method,etc.The finals are vowels or composed of vowels and consonants featured by the height of tongue,the front and back of tongue and the roundness of the lips.Tones are represented by five-level marks.Thus,we formulated a quantitative model to illustrate a Chinese syllable from its 21 features.The calculation results of the phonetic differences in the 42 representative points verify the available of the model.

Key words: Chinese dialects, phonetics, dialect difference, quantitative model