| Also Known As: Hunanese,Xiang,Hunan,Hsiang
Description:
Xiāng (Hsiang, traditional Chinese: 湘語; simplified Chinese: 湘语), also known as Hunanese (Chinese: 湖南话), is a Chinese language spoken mainly in Hunan province, but also in Sichuan and Guangxi provinces. Scholars divide it into Old Xiāng and New Xiāng. Old Xiāng dialects are of immense interest to Chinese dialectologists and historical phonologists because they, along with dialects of Wu Chinese, still exhibit the three-way distinction of Middle Chinese obstruents, preserving the voiced stops, fricatives and affricates. However, Xiāng has been heavily influenced by Mandarin, which adjoins three of the four sides of the Xiāng speaking territory. New Xiāng, which has lost the voiced obstruents, is to a certain extent intelligible to speakers of Southwestern Mandarin.
Mao Zedong, a native of Shaoshan in Xiangtan county, was a speaker of Xiāng and was not fluent in Mandarin.
According to Norman (1988), Xiāng belongs to the central group of Chinese.
Xiāng is spoken by over 36 million people in China, primarily in the central and southwestern parts of the Hunan province, in about 20 counties of Sichuan province, the four counties of Quánzhōu (全州), Guànyáng (灌陽), Zīyuán (資源) and Xīngān (興安)..... full article at Wikipedia |
