The Changsha dialect (; ) is a dialect of New Xiang Chinese. It is spoken predominantly in

Changsha Changsha is the capital of Hunan, China. It is the 15th most populous city in China with a population of 10,513,100, the Central China#Cities with urban area over one million in population, third-most populous city in Central China, and the ...

, the capital 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 ...

province,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. It is not mutually intelligible with

Standard Mandarin Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern Standard language, standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the Republic of ...

, the official language of China.

Classification

The Changsha dialect is what Chinese dialectologists would call a New Xiang variety, as opposed to Old Xiang; the distinction is mainly based on the presence of the

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 ...

voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refe ...

plosive 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 and

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

s. The Old Xiang varieties, being more conservative, have in general kept them while the New Xiang ones have altogether lost them and changed them to

voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...

unaspirated

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s. Although most Chinese dialectologists treat New Xiang as part of the group, Zhou Zhenhe and You Rujie classify it as

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 ...

Geographic distribution

The Changsha dialect is spoken in the city of

and its neighbouring suburbs. However, there are some slight differences between the urban and suburban speech. For instance, the

retroflex A retroflex () or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consona ...

set is only heard in the suburbs, but not in the city. Further, some words have a different final in the two varieties.

Dialects

There are no substantial differences between dialects in the neighbourhoods of Changsha; however, age dialects do exist. For example, the distinction between alveolar and

alveolo-palatal In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (alveolopalatal, ''alveo-palatal'' or ''alveopalatal'') consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simu ...

consonants is only made by the elderly while the younger generations do not normally distinguish them. The finals and have become and in the younger speech. Also, the initial consonant in the elderly's and middled-aged's speech is either dropped altogether or changed to .

Phonetics and phonology

The Changsha dialect, together with other New Xiang varieties, has lost the

obstruent An obstruent ( ) is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well ...

s, which are changed to

unaspirated

s. It has also lost all the final

s found in the rù tone in

Consonants

Vowels

Tones

Changsha has 6 tones, which are neutralized in syllables ending in a stop.

References

* Běijīng dàxué zhōngguóyǔyánwénxuéxì yǔyánxué jiàoyánshì (1989). ''Hànyǔ fāngyīn zìhuì''. Běijīng: Wénzì gǎigé chūbǎnshè. (北京大學中國語言文學系語言學教研室. 1989. 漢語方音字匯. 北京: 文字改革出版社) * Norman, Jerry (2002)

988 Year 988 ( CMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * Fall – Emperor Basil II, supported by a contingent of 6,000 Varangians (the future Varangian Guard), organiz ...

''Chinese''. Cambridge, England: CUP * Wu, Yunji (2005). ''A Synchronic and diachronic study of the grammar of the Chinese Xiang dialects''. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. * Yuan, Jiahua (1989). ''Hànyǔ fāngyán gàiyào'' (An introduction to Chinese regional speech varieties). Beijing, China: Wénzì gǎigé chūbǎnshè. (袁家驊. 1989. 漢語方言概要. 北京:文字改革出版社.)

External links

Cantonese and other dialects
(in Chinese)
Classification of Xiang Dialects from Glossika
Xiang Chinese {{st-lang-stub