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Sichuanese or Szechwanese ( zh, s=, t= ;
Sichuanese Pinyin Sichuanese Pinyin (Si4cuan1hua4 Pin1yin1; ), 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 Diale ...
: ''Si4cuan1hua4''; ), also called Sichuanese/Szechwanese Mandarin ( zh, s=四川官话, t=四川官話, p=Sìchuān Guānhuà, links=no) is a branch of
Southwestern Mandarin Southwestern Mandarin (), also known as Upper Yangtze Mandarin (), is a Mandarin Chinese language spoken in much of Southwest China, including in Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou, most parts of Hubei, the northwestern part of Hunan, the northe ...
spoken mainly in
Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of t ...
and
Chongqing Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a municipality in Southwest China. The official abbreviation of the city, "" (), was approved by the State Cou ...
, which was part of Sichuan Province until 1997, and the adjacent regions of their neighboring provinces, such as
Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The prov ...
,
Guizhou Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to th ...
,
Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...
,
Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi ...
and
Shaanxi Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichuan (SW), Gansu (W), Ningx ...
. 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 In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...
with each other. In addition, because Sichuanese is the
lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
in Sichuan, Chongqing and part of
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Tama ...
, it is also used by many Tibetan, Yi, Qiang and other ethnic minority groups as a second language. Sichuanese is more similar to Standard Chinese than southeastern Chinese varieties but is still quite divergent in phonology, vocabulary, and even grammar. The Minjiang dialect is especially difficult for speakers of other Mandarin dialects to understand. Sichuanese can be further divided into a number of dialects, Chengdu–Chongqing dialect, Minjiang dialect, Renshou–Fushun dialect, and Ya'an–Shimian dialect. The dialect of
Chengdu Chengdu (, ; simplified Chinese: 成都; pinyin: ''Chéngdū''; Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ), alternatively romanized as Chengtu, is a sub-provincial city which serves as the capital of the Chinese provi ...
, 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 Sichuan opera (; Sichuanese Pinyin: Cuan1ju4; ) is a type of Chinese opera originating in China's Sichuan province around 1700. Today's Sichuan opera is a relatively recent synthesis of 5 historic melodic styles. Regionally Chengdu remains to be ...
and other art forms of the region. Modern Sichuanese evolved due to a great wave of immigration during the
Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han peo ...
(1368–1644): many immigrants, mainly from Hunan, Hubei,
Jiangxi Jiangxi (; ; formerly romanized as Kiangsi or Chianghsi) is a landlocked province in the east of the People's Republic of China. Its major cities include Nanchang and Jiujiang. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north into ...
and
Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...
flooded into Sichuan bringing their languages with them.彭金祥(March 2006),《四川方音在宋代以后的发展》,乐山师范学院学报 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.


Geographic distribution and dialects

Sichuanese is mainly spoken in and around the
Sichuan Basin The Sichuan Basin (), formerly transliterated as the Szechwan Basin, sometimes called the Red Basin, is a lowland region in southwestern China. It is surrounded by mountains on all sides and is drained by the upper Yangtze River and its tribut ...
, 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 A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a sy ...
: the Minjiang dialect () which preserves the checked tone, the Chengdu-Chongqing dialect () in which the checked tone has merged into the light level tone, the Renshou-Fushun dialect () which merges the checked tone into the departing tone, and the Ya'an-Shimian dialect () in which the checked tone is merged into the dark level tone. 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, the extinct language formerly spoken by the first Sichuanese Han Chinese people. The
Chengdu Chengdu (, ; simplified Chinese: 成都; pinyin: ''Chéngdū''; Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ), alternatively romanized as Chengtu, is a sub-provincial city which serves as the capital of the Chinese provi ...
-
Chongqing Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a municipality in Southwest China. The official abbreviation of the city, "" (), was approved by the State Cou ...
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.


History

Like many of the southern provinces in China, Sichuan was fully
sinicized Sinicization, sinofication, sinification, or sinonization (from the prefix , 'Chinese, relating to China') is the process by which non-Chinese societies come under the influence of Chinese culture, particularly the language, societal norms, cul ...
by the end of the
Tang Dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingd ...
. The modern variety of Chinese spoken in the region formed relatively recently. In the thirteenth century, the population of Sichuan dropped precipitously, suspected to be due in part to a series of plagues and
Mongol invasions The Mongol invasions and conquests took place during the 13th and 14th centuries, creating history's largest contiguous empire: the Mongol Empire ( 1206-1368), which by 1300 covered large parts of Eurasia. Historians regard the Mongol devastatio ...
. The population did not recover until it was replenished by subsequent migrations from
Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The prov ...
, as well as Xiang,
Gan The word Gan or the initials GAN may refer to: Places *Gan, a component of Hebrew placenames literally meaning "garden" China * Gan River (Jiangxi) * Gan River (Inner Mongolia), * Gan County, in Jiangxi province * Gansu, abbreviated ''G� ...
and
Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhe ...
-speakers in the following centuries. These varieties largely supplanted the earlier varieties of Chinese in Sichuan, known as Ba-Shu Chinese or Old Sichuanese. Like
Min Chinese Min (; BUC: ''Mìng-ngṳ̄'') is a broad group of Sinitic languages spoken by about 30 million people in Fujian province as well as by the descendants of Min speaking colonists on Leizhou peninsula and Hainan, or assimilated natives of Chaosh ...
, Ba-Shu Chinese was different from the
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Sw ...
of the Sui, Tang and Song Dynasties, but instead a divergent dialect group independently descended from the
Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 ...
of the Han Dynasty, which formed a
substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or su ...
that influenced the formation of the modern dialect group and helps to explain the distinctiveness of Modern Sichuanese within the Mandarin
dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...
.


Phonology


Tones

There are five phonemic tones in Sichuanese: dark level tone, light level tone, rising tone, departing tone and
entering tone A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a syl ...
(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 4 tones. According to ''Phonology of Sichuan dialect'' (), among all the 150 Sichuanese-speaking cities and counties, 48 keep the checked tone while the other 102 have only 4 tones.甄尚灵等(March 1960),《四川方言音系》,四川大学学报(社会科学版) Particularly, in some sub-dialects of Minjiang dialect (such as 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: ) and a literary tone (which is the same as Chengdu dialect).易杰(2010),《川西大邑等七县市方言音系调查研究》,四川师范大学 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. 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 Southern Qiang is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Qiangic branch spoken by approximately 81,300 people along the Minjiang () river in Sichuan Province, China. Southern Qiang dialects preserve archaic pronoun flexions, while they have disappea ...
.


Initials

Initials In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that ...
(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: and . On the other hand, five initials in Beijing do not exist in Sichuanese: and . The following is the initial consonant inventory of Sichuanese, transcribed in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
, and under every IPA symbol in the inventory below there is the transcription of that sound in
Sichuanese Pinyin Sichuanese Pinyin (Si4cuan1hua4 Pin1yin1; ), 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 Diale ...
and a
Chinese character Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as '' kanj ...
using that initial:


Finals

A final, the remainder of syllable after the initial, consists of an optional medial glide, a
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...
and an optional final consonants. There are 21 finals in the Chengdu dialect of Sichuanese. Four Sichuanese finals do not exist in Beijing: , , , and . On the other hand, three Beijing finals do not exist in Sichuanese: , , and . The following is the inventory of Sichuanese finals, transcribed in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
, 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:


Tense vowels for checked tone

There is a discrepancy between Old Sichuanese and New Sichuanese in terms of finals. In the "old" Minjiang dialect, the
stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
s for checked-tone syllables in
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Sw ...
have developed into tense vowels to create a
phonemic contrast Phonemic contrast refers to a minimal phonetic difference, that is, small differences in speech sounds, that makes a difference in how the sound is perceived by listeners, and can therefore lead to different mental lexical entries for words. ...
, and in several cities and counties the tense vowels are followed by a
glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents th ...
to emphasize the contrast. Meanwhile, the checked tone has disappeared in other Sichuanese dialects.余江(May 2004),《四川官话雅棉小片入声归阴平研究》,汕头大学 The following table shows the tense vowels of Minjiang dialect's three sub-dialects, spoken in
Luzhou Luzhou (; Sichuanese Pinyin: Nu2zou1; Luzhou dialect: ), formerly transliterated as Lu-chou or Luchow, is a prefecture-level city located in the southeast of Sichuan Province, China. The city, named Jiangyang until the Southern and Northern Dyna ...
, Qionglai and
Leshan Leshan, formerly known as Jiading or Jiazhou, is a prefecture-level city located at the confluence of the Dadu and Min rivers in Sichuan Province, China. Leshan is located on the southwestern fringe of the Sichuan Basin in southern Sichuan, a ...
, and a comparison with other Sichuanese dialects is also presented.


Literary and colloquial readings

The existence of literary and colloquial readings (), is a notable feature in Sichuanese and some other Sinitic varieties, such as
Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
or Hokkien. In Sichuanese, colloquial readings tend to resemble Ba-Shu Chinese (Middle Sichuanese) or Southern
Old Mandarin Old Mandarin or Early Mandarin was the speech of northern China during the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty and the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (12th to 14th centuries). New genres of vernacular literature were based on this language, including verse, dram ...
, while literary readings tend to resemble modern standard Mandarin. For example, in the Yaoling dialect (), the colloquial reading of "" (means "things") is ,杨升初(1985年S2期),《剑阁摇铃话音系记略》,湘潭大学社会科学学报. which is very similar to its pronunciation of Ba-Shu Chinese in the
Song dynasty The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...
(960-1279).王庆(April 2010),《四川方言中没、术、物的演变》,西华大学学报(哲学社会科学版) Meanwhile, its literary reading, , is relatively similar to the standard Mandarin pronunciation . The table below shows some examples of Chinese characters with both literary and colloquial readings in Sichuanese.甄尚灵(January 1958),《成都语音的初步研究》,四川大学学报(哲学社会科学版)


Vocabulary

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 The word Gan or the initials GAN may refer to: Places *Gan, a component of Hebrew placenames literally meaning "garden" China * Gan River (Jiangxi) * Gan River (Inner Mongolia), * Gan County, in Jiangxi province * Gansu, abbreviated ''G� ...
varieties of Chinese, even though Sichuanese is usually classified as a dialect of Mandarin. The vocabulary of Sichuanese has three main origins: Ba-Shu (or Ancient Sichuanese),
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Sw ...
and the languages of the immigrants, including Proto-Mandarin from
Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The prov ...
, Xiang,
Gan The word Gan or the initials GAN may refer to: Places *Gan, a component of Hebrew placenames literally meaning "garden" China * Gan River (Jiangxi) * Gan River (Inner Mongolia), * Gan County, in Jiangxi province * Gansu, abbreviated ''G� ...
and
Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhe ...
, which were brought to Sichuan during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Recently, many
loanwords A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
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.杨文全、鲁科颖(May 2005),《当代成都方言新词汇例释——兼论其造词心理与民间文化意蕴》,西华师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)沈荭(February 2008),《重庆言子儿的文化透视》,重庆大学学报(社会科学版) "" (''xiong2qi3'') (meaning "to cheer someone on") is a typical example of a novel Sichuanese word, equivalent to "" () in standard Mandarin. "耙耳朵" (''Pá ěr duo'') is a word exclusive to Sichuanese, which means "henpecked husbands". A standard Mandarin equivalent of "" is "" (''qī guǎn yán''). The prototype of "" 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.


Relation with other Chinese languages

The Chengdu dialect is usually taken as a representative of Sichuanese. 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 The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han peop ...
and
Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...
Dynasties, so Xiang does not have such a close relationship with other southwestern varieties of Chinese, such as those spoken in
Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...
,
Guangxi Guangxi (; ; alternately romanized as Kwanghsi; ; za, Gvangjsih, italics=yes), officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in South China and bordering Vietnam ...
or
Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The prov ...
. For example, in both Sichuanese and Xiang the verb "to squat" is "" (''gu1'') but "" (''dūn'') in standard Mandarin, the noun "kitchen" is "" (''zao4vu2'') but "" (''chúfáng'') in standard, and the adjective "thick" is "" (''nyian4'') but "" (''nóng'') in standard. Furthermore, the Sichuanese vocabulary also contains words from Old Xiang and Middle Xiang, such as "" (sloppy), "" (old) and "" (son).


Status

Though Sichuanese is not as
endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inv ...
as some other
languages of China There are several hundred languages in China. The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on central Mandarin, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages, collectively known as ''Hanyu'' (, 'Han language'), that are s ...
, the prevalence of Sichuanese has dramatically lessened as the popularity of Standard Chinese has risen.夏中易(April 2002),《近四十年成都话语音变动现象考论》,成都大学学报(社科版) Government policy limits the use of Sichuanese in
broadcasting Broadcasting is the distribution (business), distribution of sound, audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio ...
,
television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
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 80s and 90s. The Sichuanese spoken by them is greatly influenced by the national language.周及徐(April 2001),《20世纪成都话音变研究》,四川师范大学学报(社会科学版)


See also

*
Bashu culture Bashu culture (), sometimes also named Chongqing-Sichuan culture, refers to the culture of Sichuan province and Chongqing city, China and the surrounding areas, including parts of the neighboring provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou, since the Han ...


References


External links


Sichuan Provincial Gazetteer: dialects 四川省志: 方言志

Grainger, Adam. ''Western Mandarin, or, The spoken language of western China''; 1900. American Presbyterian Mission Press

Kilborn, Omar Leslie. ''Chinese lessons for first year students in West China''. Kilborn (1917)
{{Chinese language Mandarin Chinese Varieties of Chinese