Southwestern Mandarin

Southwestern Mandarin
Upper Yangtze Mandarin
Spoken in	Sichuan, Yunnan, Hubei
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Mandarin Southwestern Mandarin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
[[LINGUIST List|Linguist List]]	cmn-xin

Southwestern Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 西南官话; traditional Chinese: 西南官話; pinyin: Xīnán Guānhuà), also known as Upper Yangtze Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 上江官话; traditional Chinese: 上江官話; pinyin: Shàngjiāng Guānhuà), is a primary branch of Mandarin Chinese spoken by Han Chinese people throughout many regions of central and southwestern China, such as Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou, most parts of Hubei, the western part of Hunan, the northern part of Guangxi, and some southern parts of Shaanxi and Gansu.

Varieties of Southwestern Mandarin are spoken by roughly 200 million people. If removed from the larger "Mandarin Chinese" group, it would have the 6th-most native speakers in the world, behind Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, and Bengali.

Overview

Modern Southwestern Mandarin was formed by the waves of immigrants brought to the regions during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Because of this comparatively recent move, these dialects show more similarity to modern Standard Mandarin than to languages like Cantonese or Min Nan. For example, like most southern Chinese languages, Southwestern Mandarin does not possess the retroflex consonants (zh, ch, sh, r) of Standard Mandarin, but nor does it retain the entering tone, as most southern languages do. The Chengdu-Chongqing and Hubei dialects are believed to reflect aspects of the Mandarin lingua franca spoken during the Ming Dynasty. However, some scholars believe its origins may be more similar to Lower Yangtze Mandarin.

Though part of the Mandarin language group, Southwestern Mandarin has many striking and pronounced differences with Standard Mandarin, such that until 1955 it was generally categorized alongside Cantonese and Wu Chinese as a group of non-Mandarin dialects.

Phonology

Tones

Most Southwestern Mandarin dialects have, like Standard Mandarin, only retained four of the original eight tones of Middle Chinese. However, the entering tone has completely merged with the light-level tone in most Southwestern dialects, while in Standard Mandarin it is seemingly randomly dispersed among the remaining tones. A few varieties, such as the Min River dialect, do preserve some of the final -p, -t, -k stops of the entering tone.

Tones of Southwestern Mandarin Dialects

Name		Dark-level	Light-level	Rising tone	Departing tone	Entering tone	Geographic Distribution
Sichuan	Chengdu dialect	55	21	42	213	light-level merge	Main Sichuan Basin, parts of Guizhou
	Luzhou dialect	55	21	42	13	33	Southwest Sichuan Basin
	Luding County dialect	55	21	53	24	dark-level merge	Ya'an vicinity
	Neijiang dialect	55	21	42	213	departing merge	Lower Tuo River area
Hanzhong dialect		55	21	24	212	level tone merge	Southern Shaanxi
Kunming dialect		44	31	53	212	light-level merge	Central Yunnan
Gejiu dialect		55	42	33	12	light-level merge	Southern Yunnan
Baoshan dialect		32	44	53	25	light-level merge	Western Yunnan
Huguang	Wuhan dialect	55	213	42	35	light-level merge	West-central Hubei
	Hanshou dialect	55	213	42	(light) 35/ (dark) 33	dark-level/light-departing merge	Northwest Hunan
Xiangfan dialect		34	52	55	212	light-level	Northern Hubei
Guilin dialect		33	21	55	35	light-level	Northern Guangxi, southern Hunan, southern Guizhou

Syllables

Southwestern Mandarin dialects do not possess the retroflex consonants of Standard Mandarin, but otherwise share most Mandarin phonological features. Most have lost the distinction between the nasal consonant /n/ and the lateral consonant /l/ and the nasal finals /-n/ and /-ŋ/. For example, the sounds "la" and "na" are generally indistinguishable, as well as the sounds "fen" and "feng". Some varieties also lack a distinction between the labiodental sound /f/ and the glottal /h/.

Subdivisions

• Sichuanese Mandarin
  • Minjiang dialect (divergent; represented by Luzhou above)
  • Chengdu–Chongqing dialect
  • Renshou–Fushun dialect
  • Ya'an–Shimian dialect
• Kunming dialect

See also

• Sichuan dialect