Southwestern Mandarin

Southwestern Mandarin (Chinese: 西南官话; pinyin: Xīnán Guānhuà), also known as Upper Yangtze Mandarin (Chinese: 上江官话; pinyin: Shàngjiāng Guānhuà), 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 northern part of Guangxi and some southern parts of Shaanxi and Gansu.

Southwestern Mandarin is spoken by roughly 260 million people. If considered a language distinct from central Mandarin, it would be the eighth-most spoken language by native speakers in the world, behind Mandarin itself, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic and Bengali.