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Sichuanese | |
---|---|
Szechwanese Szuchuanese | |
四川话 | |
Pronunciation | Chengdu [sz˨˩˧tsʰwan˦˥xwa˨˩˧] Chongqing [sz˨˩˦tsʰwan˥xwa˨˩˦] |
Native to | China |
Region | Sichuan, Chongqing and their neighboring provinces |
Ethnicity | Sichuanese people |
Sino-Tibetan
| |
Dialects | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | (a proposal to use scm was rejected in 2018 [1] ) |
Glottolog | None |
Sichuanese in Greater China | |
Sichuanese, [note 1] also called Sichuanese Mandarin, [note 2] is a branch of Southwestern Mandarin spoken mainly in Sichuan and Chongqing, which was part of Sichuan Province until 1997, and the adjacent regions of their neighboring provinces, such as Hubei, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan and Shaanxi. Although "Sichuanese" is often synonymous with the Chengdu-Chongqing dialect , there is still a great amount of diversity among the Sichuanese dialects, some of which are mutually unintelligible with each other. In addition, because Sichuanese is the lingua franca in Sichuan, Chongqing and part of Tibet, it is also used by many Tibetan, Yi, Qiang and other ethnic minority groups as a second language. [2] [3] [4]
Sichuanese is more similar to Standard Chinese than southeastern Chinese varieties but is still quite divergent in phonology, vocabulary, and even grammar. [2] The Minjiang dialect is especially difficult for speakers of other Mandarin dialects to understand. [5] [6] [7] [8] Sichuanese can be further divided into a number of dialects: Chengdu–Chongqing, Minjiang, Renshou–Fushun, and Ya'an–Shimian. The dialect of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province and an important central city, is the most representative dialect of Southwestern Mandarin and is used widely in Sichuan opera and other art forms of the region.
Modern Sichuanese evolved due to a great wave of immigration during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644): many immigrants, mainly from Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Guangdong, flooded into Sichuan bringing their languages with them. [9] The influence of Sichuanese has resulted in a distinct form of Standard Chinese that is often confused with "real" Sichuanese. Sichuanese, spoken by about 120 million people, would rank tenth among languages by number of speakers (just behind Japanese) if counted as a separate language.
Sichuanese is mainly spoken in and around the Sichuan Basin, which includes almost all of Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality except for some Tibetan and Yi inhabited areas. It is also spoken in the border regions of Sichuan's neighboring provinces: northern Yunnan and Guizhou, southern Shaanxi and western Hubei.
However, it is possible to divide Sichuanese into four sub-dialects according to the preservation or distribution of the Middle Chinese checked tone: the Minjiang dialect (岷江 小片), which preserves the checked tone; the Chengdu-Chongqing dialect (成 渝 片), in which the checked tone has merged into the light level tone; the Renshou-Fushun dialect (仁 富 小片), which merges the checked tone into the departing tone; and the Ya'an–Shimian dialect (雅 棉 小片), in which the checked tone is merged into the dark level tone. [2] [10]
The Minjiang, Ya'an–Shimian and Renshou–Fushun dialects are spoken mainly in South and West Sichuan, regions in which the inhabitants have significantly more indigenous Sichuanese descent than those of North and East Sichuan. Thus, these dialects are often referred as Old Sichuanese, as the preserve many characteristics of Bashu,[ which? ] the extinct language formerly spoken by the first Sichuanese Han Chinese people. The Chengdu-Chongqing dialect, named after the two largest cities in greater Sichuan, are spoken in a contiguous area mainly in North and East Sichuan. It is often referred as New Sichuanese because it exhibits fewer characteristics of the Bashu language. [11]
Name | Characteristics | Spoken areas |
---|---|---|
Chengdu–Chongqing dialect | entering tone distributed into light level tone | North and East Sichuan, the northeastern part of Chengdu Plain, several cities or counties in southwestern Sichuan (Panzhihua, Dechang, Yanyuan, Huili and Ningnan), Southern Shaanxi and Western Hubei |
Minjiang dialect | entering tone preserved | 44 cities or counties in Minjiang River valley or along the Yangtze River in South and West Sichuan, Xichang, Xichong, Yanting, Shehong, northern Yunnan and northern Guizhou |
Renshou–Fushun dialect | entering tone distributed into departing tone | 8 cities or counties in Tuo River valley (Renshou, Jingyan, Weiyuan, Zigong, Rongxian, Fushun, Neijiang and Longchang), Junlian and Mianning |
Ya'an–Shimian dialect | entering tone distributed into dark level tone | Ya'an (prefecture-level city) in West Sichuan |
This section needs additional citations for verification .(October 2023) |
Like many of the southern provinces in China, Sichuan was fully sinicized by the end of the Tang dynasty. [12] The modern variety of Chinese spoken in the region formed relatively recently. [12] In the thirteenth century, the population of Sichuan dropped precipitously, suspected to be due in part to a series of plagues and Mongol invasions. [12] The population did not recover until it was replenished by subsequent migrations from Hubei, as well as Xiang, Gan and Hakka-speakers in the following centuries. These varieties largely supplanted the earlier varieties of Chinese in Sichuan, [12] known as Ba–Shu Chinese or Old Sichuanese. Like Min Chinese, Ba-Shu Chinese was different from the Middle Chinese of the Sui, Tang and Song dynasties, but instead a divergent dialect group independently descended from the Old Chinese of the Han dynasty,[ citation needed ] which formed a substratum that influenced the formation of the modern dialect group and helps to explain the distinctiveness of Modern Sichuanese within the Mandarin dialect continuum.[ citation needed ]
This article should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{ lang }}, {{ transliteration }} for transliterated languages, and {{ IPA }} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used.(October 2023) |
There are five phonemic tones in Sichuanese: dark level tone, light level tone, rising tone, departing tone and entering tone (or checked tone). In some regions the checked tone of Sichuanese has been merged into another tone, which is very different from standard Mandarin, whose checked tone has been merged irregularly into the other four tones. According to Phonology of Sichuan dialect (四川方言音系), among all the 150 Sichuanese-speaking cities and counties, 48 keep the checked tone while the other 102 have only four tones. [13] Particularly, in some sub-dialects of the Minjiang dialect (such as the Yingjing dialect), the departing tone has developed into two different tones: a colloquial tone (which is similar to the second tone as a characteristic of Ba-Shu: 平声似去) and a literary tone (which is the same as the Chengdu dialect). [14]
The tone contours of the Sichuanese dialects are highly and quite different from those of Beijing Mandarin. In Sichuanese, the first tone (dark level tone) is a high level tone (like Beijing), the second tone (light level tone) is a low falling tone (the mirror image of Beijing), the third tone (rising tone) is a high falling tone and the fourth tone (departing tone) is a low or mid rising tone (interchanged compared to Beijing) and the fifth tone (entering tone) is mid or high if it's not merged, as shown in the chart below. [13]
Sub-dialects | 1st tone | 2nd tone | 3rd tone | 4th tone | 5th tone |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Chengdu | ˥ 55 ˦˥ 45 [15] | ˨˩ 21 | ˥˧ 53 | ˨˩˧ 213 | merged into the 2nd ˨˩ |
Chongqing | ˥ 55 | ˨˩ 21 | ˦˨ 42 | ˨˩˦ 214 | merged into the 2nd ˨˩ |
Leshan | ˥ 55 | ˨˩ 21 | ˥˨ 52 | ˨˨˦ 224 | ˧ 3 (checked) |
Yingjing | ˥ 45 | ˩˨˩ 121 | ˥˧ 53 | ˩ 11 (colloquial) ˨˩˧ 213 (literary) | ˧ 33 |
Luzhou | ˥ 55 | ˨˩ 21 | ˦˨ 42 | ˩˧ 13 | ˧ 33 |
Ya'an | ˥ 55 | ˨˩ 21 | ˦˨ 42 | ˩˦ 14 | merged into the 1st ˥ |
Zigong | ˥ 55 | ˧˩ 31 | ˥˧ 53 | ˨˦ 24 | merged into the 4th ˨˦ |
In the areas which keep the entering tone, the five tones of Sichuanese are nearly identical to the values of 5 of the 6 tones of the indigenous Southern Qiang language.
Initials (or syllable onsets) are initial consonants of possible syllables. There are 21 initials in the Chengdu dialect of Sichuanese (academically referred as Standard Sichuanese). Four Sichuanese initial consonants do not exist in Beijing: [z],[v],[ŋ] and [nʲ]. On the other hand, five initials in Beijing do not exist in Sichuanese: [tʂ],[tʂʰ],[ʂ],[ʐ] and [l].
The following is the initial consonant inventory of Sichuanese, transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet, and under every IPA symbol in the inventory below there is the transcription of that sound in Sichuanese Pinyin and a Chinese character using that initial: [13]
Labial | Coronal | Alveolo-palatal | Velar | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plosive | plain | /p/ b 贝 | /t/ d 得 | /k/ g 古 | |
aspirated | /pʰ/ p 配 | /tʰ/ t 套 | /kʰ/ k 可 | ||
Affricate | plain | /ts/ z 早 | /tɕ/ j 价 | ||
aspirated | /tsʰ/ c 草 | /tɕʰ/ q 巧 | |||
Nasal | /m/ m 没 | /n/ n 路 | /ɲ/ ȵ 你 | /ŋ/ ng 我 | |
Fricative | Voiceless | /f/ f 发 | /s/ s 是 | /ɕ/ x 小 | /x/ h 好 |
Voiced | /v/ v 五 | /z/ r 如 | |||
Zero | ∅ 儿 |
A final, the remainder of syllable after the initial, consists of an optional medial glide, a vowel and an optional final consonants. There are 36 finals in the Chengdu dialect of Sichuanese. Four Sichuanese finals do not exist in Beijing: [ɛ], [iai], [uɛ], and [yo]. On the other hand, three Beijing finals do not exist in Sichuanese: [ɤ], [iŋ], and [əŋ].
The following is the inventory of Sichuanese finals, transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet, and under every IPA symbol in the inventory below there is the standard orthography of that sound in Sichuanese Pinyin and a Chinese character using that final: [13]
-Ø | -i or -u | nasal finals | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ø- | /z̩/ i 日 | /ɚ/ er 二 | /a/ a 大 | /o/ o 我 | /ɛ/ e 黑 | /ai/ ai 街 | /ei/ ei 批 | /au/ ao 包 | /əu/ ou 走 | /an/ an 烦 [16] | /ən/ en 樱 | /aŋ/ ang 帮 | /oŋ/ ong 亩 |
i- | /i/ i 一 | /ia/ ia 牙 | /iɛ/ ie 叶 | /iai/ iai 介 | /iau/ iao 标 | /iəu/ iu 九 | /ian/ ian 变 [16] | /in/ in 兵 | /iaŋ/ iang 量 | ||||
u- | /u/ u 五 | /ua/ ua 瓜 | /uɛ/ ue 国 | /uai/ uai 乖 | /uei/ ui 类 | /uan/ uan 段 [16] | /uən/ un 春 | /uaŋ/ uang 光 | |||||
y- | /y/ ü 鱼 | /yo/ üo 药 | /ye/ üe 绝 | /yan/ üan 鲜 [16] | /yn/ ün 泳 | /yoŋ/ iong 蓉 |
There is a discrepancy between Old Sichuanese and New Sichuanese in terms of finals. In the "old" Minjiang dialect, the stop consonants for checked-tone syllables in Middle Chinese have developed into tense vowels to create a phonemic contrast, and in several cities and counties the tense vowels are followed by a glottal stop to emphasize the contrast. Meanwhile, the checked tone has disappeared in other Sichuanese dialects. [17] The following table shows the tense vowels of Minjiang dialect's three sub-dialects, spoken in Luzhou, Qionglai and Leshan, and a comparison with other Sichuanese dialects is also presented.
example | Minjiang | Ya'an–Shimian | Chengdu-Chongqing | Renshou–Fushun | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Luzhou | Qionglai | Leshan | Luding | Chengdu | Chongqing | Zigong | |
搭 | [æ] | [æ] | [æ] | [a] | [a] | [a] | [a] |
说 | [ɵ] | [ʊ] | [ʊ] | [o] | [o] | [o] | [o] |
黑 | [e] | [æ] | [e] | [ɛ] | [ɛ] | [ɛ] | [ɛ] |
踢 | [ie] | [ie] | [ie] | [i] | [iɛ] | [i] | [i] |
出 | [ɵ] | [ʊ] | [ʊ] | [u] | [u] | [u] | [u] |
欲 | [yɵ] | [yʊ] | [yʊ] | [y] | [yo] | [yu] | [yi] |
湿 | [ə] | [ə] | [ə] | [z̩] | [z̩] | [z̩] | [z̩] |
掐 | [iæ] | [iɐ] | [iæ] | [ia] | [ia] | [ia] | [ia] |
刮 | [uæ] | [uɐ] | [uæ] | [ua] | [ua] | [ua] | [ua] |
铁 | [ie] | [ie] | [ie] | [iɛ] | [iɛ] | [iɛ] | [iɛ] |
获 | [ɵ] | [uæ] | [æ] | [uɛ] | [uɛ] | [uɛ] | [ue] |
阅 | [yɵ] | [ye] | [yʊ] | [yɛ] | [yɛ] | [yɛ] | [yɛ] |
药 | [yɵ] | [yʊ] | [yʊ] | [yo] | [yo] | [yo] | [yo] |
The existence of literary and colloquial readings (文白异读), is a notable feature in Sichuanese and some other Sinitic varieties, such as Cantonese or Hokkien. In Sichuanese, colloquial readings tend to resemble Ba-Shu Chinese (Old Sichuanese) or Southern Old Mandarin, while literary readings tend to resemble modern standard Mandarin. For example, in the Yaoling dialect (摇铃话), the colloquial reading of "物" (means "things") is [væʔ], [18] which is very similar to its pronunciation of Ba-Shu Chinese in the Song dynasty (960–1279). [19] Meanwhile, its literary reading, [voʔ], is relatively similar to the standard Mandarin pronunciation [wu]. The table below shows some examples of Chinese characters with both literary and colloquial readings in Sichuanese. [20]
Example | Colloquial Reading | Literary Reading | Meaning | Standard Mandarin Pronunciation |
---|---|---|---|---|
在 | /tɛ˨˩˧/ | /tsai˨˩˧/ | at | /tsai˥˩/ |
提 | /tia˥/ | /tʰi˨˩/ | lift | /tʰi˧˥/ |
去 | /tɕʰie˨˩˧/ | /tɕʰy˨˩˧/ | go | /tɕʰy˥˩/ |
锯 | /kɛ/ | /tɕy˨˩˧/ | cut | /tɕy˥˩/ |
下 | /xa˨˩˧/ | /ɕia˨˩˧/ | down | /ɕia˥˩/ |
横 | /xuan˨˩/ | /xuən˨˩/ | across | /xəŋ˧˥/ |
严 | /ŋan/ | /ȵian/ | strict | /iɛn˧˥/ |
鼠 | /suei/ | /su˥˧/ | rat | /ʂu˨˩˦/ |
大 | /tʰai/ | /ta˨˩˧/ | big | /ta˥˩/ |
主 | /toŋ/ | /tsu˥˧/ | master | /tʂu˨˩˦/ |
Only 47.8% of Sichuanese vocabulary is in common with the Beijing dialect on which Standard Chinese is based; indeed Sichuanese shares more vocabulary with the Xiang and Gan varieties of Chinese, even though Sichuanese is usually classified as a dialect of Mandarin. [2]
The vocabulary of Sichuanese has three main origins: Ba-Shu (or Ancient Sichuanese), Middle Chinese and the languages of the immigrants, including Proto-Mandarin from Hubei, Xiang, Gan and Hakka, which were brought to Sichuan during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Recently, many loanwords have been introduced to Sichuanese from standard Mandarin and English. Meanwhile, new Sichuanese words are developing in large cities, such as Chengdu and Chongqing, which then spread at a dramatic speed through Sichuan. [21] [22] " 雄起 " (xiong2qi3) (meaning "to cheer someone on") is a typical example of a novel Sichuanese word, equivalent to " 加油 " (jiāyóu) in standard Mandarin. "耙耳朵" (Pá ěr duo) is a word exclusive to Sichuanese, which means "henpecked husbands". A standard Mandarin equivalent of "耙耳朵" is " 妻管严 " (qī guǎn yán). The prototype of "耙耳朵" comes from a kind of bicycle with "ears" in Chengdu, which was first invented by men in Chengdu in order to make their wives sit more comfortably. There are still a few such bikes on streets of Chengdu.
Sichuanese Dialect | Standard Chinese | Sichuanese Dialect | Standard Chinese | |
---|---|---|---|---|
歪(waī) | 凶恶(xīong è) | 巴(bā) | 粘贴(zhān tiē) | |
左(zuǒ) | 跑音(pǎo yīn) | 费(feì) | 调皮(tíao pí) | |
撵(nǐan) | 追赶(zhuī gǎn) | 刨(páo) | 拨弄(bō nòng) | |
号(hào) | 批阅(pī yuè) | 摸(mō) | 拖延(tuō yán) | |
巴适(bā shì) | 好(hǎo) | 盐巴(yán bá) | 盐(yán) | |
瓢羹(píao gēng) | 勺(sháo) | 𤆵和(pā huó) | 软(ruǎn) | |
嘎嘎(ga ga) | 肉(roù) | 几下(jǐ xià) | 快(kuaì) | |
估到(gū dào) | 逼(bī) | 啪啦(pā lā) | 堆(duī) |
The Chengdu dialect is usually taken as a representative of Sichuanese. [2] Sichuanese shares the most similar vocabulary with Yunnanese, a dialect of Southwestern Mandarin spoken in the neighboring province. However, the relationship between Sichuanese and Northern Mandarin dialects, including the standard language, is weaker than the relationship between Xiang and Gan.
In terms of vocabulary, Sichuanese has the second closest relationship with Xiang. The two varieties share a large number of exclusively unique words. This is mainly because many Xiang-speaking immigrants from Hunan moved to Sichuan during the great wave of immigration during the Ming and Qing dynasties, so Xiang does not have such a close relationship with other southwestern varieties of Chinese, such as those spoken in Yunnan, Guangxi or Hubei. [23] For example, in both Sichuanese and Xiang the verb "to squat" is "跍" (gu1) but "蹲" (dūn) in standard Mandarin, the noun "kitchen" is "灶屋" (zao4vu2) but "厨房" (chúfáng) in standard, and the adjective "thick" is "酽" (ȵian4) but "浓" (nóng) in standard. [24] Furthermore, the Sichuanese vocabulary also contains words from Old Xiang and Middle Xiang, such as "謱謰" (sloppy), "革" (old) and "崽" (son). [23]
Rank | Chinese languages | Major dialect | Percentage of the same vocabulary with Sichuanese |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Southwestern Mandarin-Yunnanese | Kunming | 58.3% |
2 | Xiang | Changsha | 54.9% |
3 | Jianghuai Mandarin | Yangzhou | 52.7% |
4 | Gan | Nanchang | 49.4% |
5 | Northern Mandarin | Beijing | 47.8% |
6 | Wu | Suzhou | 36.4% |
7 | Yue | Guangzhou | 27.4% |
8 | Hakka | Meixian | 27.2% |
9 | Min | Xiamen | 20.2% |
Though Sichuanese is not as endangered as some other languages of China, [25] the prevalence of Sichuanese has dramatically lessened as the popularity of Mandarin Chinese has risen. [26] Government policy limits the use of Sichuanese in broadcasting, television and many public places. Furthermore, the use of Sichuanese as a teaching medium is not permitted in the curriculum, which has resulted in a reduction of fluency among young people in Sichuanese-speaking areas since the 1980s and 1990s. The Sichuanese spoken by them is greatly influenced by the national language. [27]
The decline of Sichuanese threatens to severely impact Ba-Shu culture, rooted in the Sichuanese dialect, particularly traditional Shu arts such as Sichuan opera, risking severe decline or even extinction. [28] China enacted laws in 2000 mandating the use of Mandarin. Provinces, including Sichuan, established language committees to advise, monitor, and enforce Mandarin usage. [29] The mandate inevitably caused massive decline in audience members and the performance of traditional Ba-shu folk art.
Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau between the Jinsha River on the west, the Daba Mountains in the north and the Yungui Plateau to the south. Sichuan's capital city is Chengdu; its population stands at 83 million. Sichuan neighbors Qinghai to the northwest, Gansu to the north, Shaanxi to the northeast, Chongqing to the east, Guizhou to the southeast, Yunnan to the south, and Tibet to the west.
The Sinitic languages, often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split between the Sinitic languages and the rest of the family. This view is rejected by some researchers but has found phylogenetic support among others. The Macro-Bai languages, whose classification is difficult, may be an offshoot of Old Chinese and thus Sinitic; otherwise, Sinitic is defined only by the many varieties of Chinese unified by a shared historical background, and usage of the term "Sinitic" may reflect the linguistic view that Chinese constitutes a family of distinct languages, rather than variants of a single language.
Southwestern Mandarin, also known as Upper Yangtze Mandarin, is a Mandarin Chinese dialect spoken in much of Southwestern China, including in Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou, most parts of Hubei, the northwestern part of Hunan, the northern part of Guangxi and some southern parts of Shaanxi and Gansu.
Erhua ; also called "erization" or "rhotacization of syllable finals") is a phonological process that adds r-coloring or the er sound to syllables in spoken Mandarin Chinese. Erhuayin is the pronunciation of "er" after rhotacization of syllable finals.
Jiamao is a divergent Kra-Dai language or possible language isolate spoken in southern Hainan, China. Jiamao speakers' autonym is 1.
Waxiang is a divergent variety of Chinese, spoken by the Waxiang people, an unrecognized ethnic minority group in the northwestern part of Hunan province, China. Waxiang is a distinct language, and is very different from the surrounding Southwestern Mandarin, Xiang Chinese, and the Eastern Miao (Xong) languages.
Differing literary and colloquial readings for certain Chinese characters are a common feature of many Chinese varieties, and the reading distinctions for these linguistic doublets often typify a dialect group. Literary readings are usually used in loanwords, geographic and personal names, literary works such as poetry, and in formal contexts, while colloquial readings are used in everyday vernacular speech.
Sichuanese Standard Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 四川普通话; traditional Chinese: 四川普通話; Sichuanese Pinyin: Si4cuan1 Pu3tong1hua4; pinyin: Sìchuān Pǔtōnghuà; Wade–Giles: Szŭ4-ch'uan1 P'u3-t'ung1-hua4), or Szechwanese/Szuchuanese Standard Mandarin, also known as Pepper Salt Standard Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 椒盐普通话; traditional Chinese: 椒鹽普通話), is a variant of Standard Mandarin derived from the official Standard Mandarin spoken in Sichuanese-speaking areas (mainly Sichuan and Chongqing) in China, and is often called "川普" (Chuan1pu3, Chuānpǔ or Ch'uan1-p'u3) for short.
Sichuanese Pinyin (Si4cuan1hua4 Pin1yin1; simplified Chinese: 四川话拼音; traditional Chinese: 四川話拼音; pinyin: Sìchuānhuà pīnyīn), is a romanization system specifically designed for the Chengdu dialect of Sichuanese. It is mostly used in selected Sichuanese dictionaries, such as the Sichuan Dialect Dictionary, Sichuan Dialect's Vocabulary Explanation, and the Chengdu Dialect Dictionary. Sichuanese Pinyin is based on Hanyu Pinyin, the only Chinese romanization system officially instructed within the People's Republic of China, for convenience amongst users. However, Hanyu Pinyin is unable to match the phonology of Sichuanese with complete precision, especially in the case for the Minjiang dialect, as there are many differences between Sichuanese and Standard Chinese in phonology.
The Minjiang dialect is a branch of Sichuanese, spoken mainly in the Min River (Mínjiāng) valley or along the Yangtze in the southern and western parts of the Sichuan Basin in China. There is also a language island of the Minjiang dialect located in the center of the Sichuan Basin covering several counties, including all of Xichong, Yanting, and Shehong Counties, and part of Jiange, Cangxi, Nanbu, Langzhong and Bazhong. The Minjiang dialect is also referred to as the Nanlu dialect by some scholars.
Ba–Shu Chinese (Chinese: 巴蜀語; pinyin: Bāshǔyǔ; Wade–Giles: Ba1 Shu3 Yü3; Sichuanese Pinyin: Ba¹su²yu³; IPA:[pa˥su˨˩y˥˧]), or simply Shu Chinese (Chinese: 蜀語), also known as Old Sichuanese, is an extinct Chinese language formerly spoken in what is now Sichuan and Chongqing, China.
The Leshan dialect (simplified Chinese: 乐山话; traditional Chinese: 樂山話; pinyin: Lèshānhuà; Sichuanese Standard Chinese: No2san1hua4; local pronunciation:[nʊʔ3sã55xuɑ224]) is the Sichuanese dialect of the city of Leshan and is a variety of Minjiang. It preserves old southern (Ba-Shu) features lost in other Sichuanese dialects and is very different from the dialects of most other cities in the province of Sichuan, which are more typically Mandarin.
The Sichuanese people are a Han Chinese subgroup comprising most of the population of China's Sichuan province and the Chongqing municipality.
Chengdu-Chongqing dialect or Cheng–Yu is the most widely used branch of Southwestern Mandarin, with about 90 million speakers. It is named after Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan, and Chongqing, which was split from Sichuan in 1997. It is spoken mainly in northern and eastern Sichuan, the northeastern part of the Chengdu Plain, several cities or counties in southwestern Sichuan, southern Shaanxi and western Hubei.
The Zigong dialect is a branch of Southwestern Mandarin, spoken mainly in Zigong, Fushun, Weiyuan, east Rongxian and some parts of Yibin, Neijiang, Longchang and other neighboring areas of Sichuan.
Nuoxi Yao, or Nuoxihua 𦰡溪话, is a Kam–Sui language of Nuoxi Township, Dongkou County, Hunan Province, China. Even though they are classified as ethnic Yao people by the Chinese government, the Nuoxi Yao speak a Kam–Sui language closely related to Dong. Shi (2015:132) considers Nuoxi Yao to have split off from Dong about 600 years.
The Tongdao Pinghua is a variety of Guibei Pinghua (桂北平话) influenced by Kam (Dong). It is spoken by about 25,000 people in Tongdao Dong Autonomous County, Hunan, China.
She or Shehua is an unclassified Sinitic language spoken by the She people of Southeastern China. It is also called Shanha, San-hak (山哈) or Shanhahua (山哈话). She speakers are located mainly in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces of Southeastern China, with smaller numbers of speakers in a few locations of Jiangxi, Guangdong and Anhui provinces.
The Xiangxiang dialect is a dialect of Xiang Chinese, spoken in Xiangxiang, Hunan province, China. It is part of a group of dialects called the Central Xiang dialects.