Old Xiang, also known as Lou-Shao (), is a

conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

Xiang Chinese Xiang or Hsiang ( Chinese: 湘; Changsha Xiang: , Mandarin: ), also known as Hunanese, is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages, spoken mainly in Hunan province but also in northern Guangxi and parts of n ...

language. It is spoken in the central areas of

Hunan Hunan is an inland Provinces of China, province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the Administrative divisions of China, province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Gu ...

where it has been to some extent isolated from the neighboring Chinese languages,

Southwestern Mandarin 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 nor ...

and Gan languages, and it retains the voiced plosives of

Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...

, which are otherwise only preserved in Wu languages like

Shanghainese The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, or Hu language, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the central districts of the city of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan langua ...

. See Shuangfeng dialect for details.

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...

was a speaker of Old Xiang with his native Shaoshan dialect.

Dialects and regions

The Shuangfeng dialect is representative. Laba Miao (喇叭苗话) is an Old Xiang dialect spoken by the Laba Miao people of western Guizhou. In Guizhou, it is spoken in Qinglong County 晴隆县 (including in Changliu Township 长流乡), Pu'an County 普安县, Liuzhi County 六枝县, Shuicheng County, 水城县, and Panzhou 盘州. Matanghua (麻塘话) is a variety of Old Xiang that is spoken in Matang Ethnic Miao Township (麻塘苗族乡), Suining County, Hunan.Glottolog reference 324002

Dialects and regions

References

Further reading