Abstract: A large number of archaic words in the dialect nursery rhymes in Northeast Yunnan show thesimplicity of ancient times, and record the history of immigration and the formation of Chinese dialects.After the May 4th Movement of 1919, under the influence of the Vernacular Language Movement and thenew trends of thought, a large number of nursery rhymes featuring children's nature have emerged. Newwords and expressions reflecting the new things are found in the dialect nursery rhymes , which is to “takein the fresh. As a folk oral literature which is on the verge of disappearing, dialect nursery rhymes pre-serve the characteristics of the local dialect, which is the “living fossil”for language research. The pur.pose of this paper is to deeply explore the vocabulary characteristics of nursery rhymes in Northeast Yun-nan dialects via corpus and classics.

Key words: Northeast Yunnan, dialect nursery rhyme, keeping the old, absorbing new things, vocabulary