This really interesting and much appreciated. Too bad the sounds of 昆明话 aren't available.

It is a trip to shop in the wet market and hear the different dialects and to hear some switch dialects depending on the customer.

Sean1, your insight to the grammar is great. Helps parse out many of the things confusing me. Thanks!

You are right on, developing software for what is an obscure, declining, language variant would have to be a labor of love. No bucks, or yuan, in it.

hate to keep adding on, but yeah yuantongsi

To say 'what are you doing?" mandarin- 你在干什么? becomes

你在整喃样？ ni zai zhengnanyang?

@sean1

thanks a lot for the great explanation!

谢谢嘎！:-)

@ sean, I think you can see there is interest, a lot of interest.

Anyone know anything about software development?

GKM, does and it will be a huge feather in the cap of this site to do it.

Rule of thumb for software development:

Whatever the developer estimates cost will be, double it.
The estimated time to finish, double it.

Whatever estimated sales are, divide by 2.

The programmers never finish. They always can make it just a bit better.

I've owned a piece of a company that develops software since 1986. Using accounting rules and getting outside programmers to take stock, the company has a cumulative loss. Because of the way I set up the amortization policies, most years the company loses money for financial and tax purposes. However, most years, cash flow is positive. I have, several times, convinced the IRS the is a real business.

MS is a major customer. If you use Excel, you have seen our kernels in action. Our stuff is in high level, very expensive forecasting and financial software.

sean1, trust me, the market for a 昆明话 tutorial is minuscule. If you can do it yourself, go for it. If you need a programmer, good luck. If you like Chinese style programs, find a kid that might be interested. But, there is a huge downside to that route.

Geezer, don't take me too seriously. although I think you can see there is interest, alot of interest, I simply don't care that much. Anyway, who needs software when a website would work just as well. Maybe I should email Rosetta stone and see if we could team up.

Sean1, go for it! I am very interested, but then I live here and have to deal with it. Just what you have written here is great. A free, to you, web site would work. You could add stuff you think is interesting and invite others to chip in as well.

Pronunciation, like the reversed sounds for 四 and 十, would be cool too. You could do that with mp3 files. All can be DIY with free software.

A couple of little things I found:
1. There's a few short examples of Kunminghua here (with English translations/notes): en.kunming.cn/index/node_32973.htm

2. At Mandarin Books, you'll find a small volume called 云南方言：昆明话 (云南大学出版社, 2011). It's in Chinese; price 12 yuan. If you're interested in reading about the dialect in a more detailed way.