The Minjiang dialect (, ; ) is a possible
Sichuanese dialect spoken mainly in the
Min River (''Mínjiāng'') valley or along the
Yangtze
The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ) is the longest river in Eurasia and the third-longest in the world. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and flows including Dam Qu River the longest source of the Yangtze, i ...
in the southern and western parts of 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 tributar ...
in
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 ...
. There is also a
language island
A language island (a calque of German ''Sprachinsel''; also language enclave, language pocket) is an enclave of a language that is surrounded by one or more different languages. The term was introduced in 1847. Many speakers of these languages als ...
of the Minjiang dialect located in the center of the Sichuan Basin covering several counties, including all of
Xichong,
Yanting, and
Shehong Counties, and part of
Jiange,
Cangxi,
Nanbu,
Langzhong
Langzhong (formerly known as Paoning) is a county-level city in northeastern Sichuan province, China, located on the middle reaches of the Jialing River. It is administered as part of the prefecture-level city of Nanchong. Langzhong has a total ...
and
Bazhong
Bazhong () is a prefecture-level city in north-eastern Sichuan province, China. Its population was 2,712,894 at the 2020 census whom 1,064,766 lived in Bazhou and Enyang urban districts. As of the end of 2022, the resident population of Bazhong Ci ...
. The Minjiang dialect is also referred to as the Nanlu dialect by some scholars.
The primary characteristic of the Minjiang dialect is that 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 language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
have developed into
tense vowels to create a phonemic contrast, and in several cities and counties the tense vowels retain a following
glottal stop
The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...
. It also keeps many characteristics of
Ba–Shu Chinese
Ba–Shu Chinese ( zh, t=巴蜀語, w=Ba1 Shu3 Yü3, p=Bāshǔyǔ; Sichuanese Pinyin: Ba¹su²yu³; ), or simply Shu Chinese ( zh, t=蜀語), also known as Old Sichuanese, is an extinct Chinese language formerly spoken in what is now Sichuan an ...
phonology and vocabulary.
Due to these characteristics, the status of the Minjiang dialect is disputed among linguists, with some classifying 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 ...
,
and others setting it apart as a continuation of Ba–Shu Chinese, the native language of Sichuan before the end of the Yuan dynasty.
Notes
References
{{Chinese language