Maihua () is a

variety of Chinese Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of m ...

of uncertain affiliation spoken in the area of 崖县 ''Yáxiàn'' (

Sanya Sanya (; also spelled Samah) is the southernmost city on Hainan Island, and one of the four prefecture-level cities of Hainan Province in South China. According to the 2020 census, the total population of Sanya was 1,031,396 inhabitants, li ...

) in southern

Hainan Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slightly l ...

, China. It was classified as Yue in the ''

Language Atlas of China The ''Language Atlas of China'' (), published in two parts in 1987 and 1989, maps the distribution of both the varieties of Chinese and minority languages of China. It was a collaborative effort by the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the ...

'', but that is no longer certain. There are about 15,000 speakers of Maihua in southern Hainan.

Classification

Jiang et al. (2007) considers Maihua to be a mix of

Yue Chinese Yue () is a group of similar Sinitic languages spoken in Southern China, particularly in Liangguang (the Guangdong and Guangxi provinces). The name Cantonese is often used for the whole group, but linguists prefer to reserve that name for ...

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, Zhej ...

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 ''Gā ...

, and Hainanese Min.

Distribution

Maihua is spoken in the following areas. * Yanglan Village (羊栏村), Fenghuang Town (凤凰镇), originally called Yanglan Town 羊栏镇), in the northwestern part of

City (5,000 speakers) * Linjia Village (林家村) and Miaoshan Village (妙山村) of Miaolin Township (妙林乡, 6,000 speakers) * Shuinan Village (水南村), Gongbei Village (拱北村), etc., in Yacheng Town (崖城镇), western Sanya City (三亚市, about 1,000 speakers) The Utsat language is spoken just to the west of the Maihua area. Just to the southwest is Haibo Village (海波村), where Danzhouhua (儋州话) is spoken.

References

*
海南岛的"迈话"--一种混合型方言
Varieties of Chinese {{St-lang-stub