page_title: Xiang Chinese
section_title: Languages and dialects
hierarchical_section_title: Xiang Chinese / Languages and dialects
caption_attribution_description: English: The Chinese dialogue of Xiang
context_page_description: Xiang or Hsiang, also known as Hunanese, is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages, spoken mainly in Hunan province but also in northern Guangxi and parts of neighboring Guizhou and Hubei provinces. Scholars divided Xiang into five subgroups, Chang-Yi, Lou-Shao, Hengzhou, Chen-Xu and Yong-Quan. Among those, Lou-shao, also known as Old Xiang, still exhibits the three-way distinction of Middle Chinese obstruents, preserving the voiced stops, fricatives, and affricates. Xiang has also been heavily influenced by Mandarin, which adjoins three of the four sides of the Xiang speaking territory, and Gan in Jiangxi Province, from where a large population immigrated to Hunan during the Ming Dynasty.
  Xiang-speaking Hunanese people have played an important role in Modern Chinese history, especially in those reformatory and revolutionary movements such as the Self-Strengthening Movement, Hundred Days' Reform, Xinhai Revolution and Chinese Communist Revolution. Some examples of Xiang speakers are Mao Zedong, Zuo Zongtang, Huang Xing and Ma Ying-jeou.
context_section_description: Since the classification of Yuan Jiahua (1960), Xiang has been considered one of seven major groups of varieties of Chinese.  Jerry Norman classified Xiang, Gan and Wu as central groups, intermediate between the Mandarin group to the north and the southern groups, Min, Hakka and Yue.
  In Xiang languages, the voiced initials of Middle Chinese yield unaspirated initials in all tone categories.  A few varieties have retained voicing in all tones, but most have voiceless initials in some or all tone categories.
  Pervasive influence from Mandarin dialects has made Xiang dialects difficult to classify.
  Yuan Jiahua divided Xiang into New Xiang, in which voicing has been lost completely, and Old Xiang varieties, which retain voiced initials in at least some tones.  The Changsha dialect is usually taken as representative of New Xiang, while Shuangfeng dialect represents Old Xiang.  Norman describes the boundary between New Xiang and Southwestern Mandarin as one of the weakest in China, with considerable similarities between dialects near either side of the boundary, though more distant dialects are mutually unintelligible.
  Indeed, Zhou Zhenhe and You Rujie (unlike most authors) classified New Xiang as part of Southwestern Mandarin.
  The Language Atlas of China relabelled the New and Old Xiang groups as Chang-Yi and Lou-Shao respectively, and identified a third subgroup, Ji-Xu, in some parts of Western Hunan.  Bao & Chen (2005) split out part of Atlas's Chang-Yi subgroup as a new Hengzhou subgroup, and part of Lou-Shao as a Yong-Quan subgroup.  They also reclassified parts of the Ji–Xu subgroup as Southwestern Mandarin, renaming the remainder of the subgroup as Chen-Xu Xiang.  Their five subgroups are:
  Chang-Yi
  (17.8 million speakers) voiced initials in Middle Chinese become unaspirated voiceless consonant. Most of the dialects retain the entering tone as a separate category.
  Lou-Shao
  (11.5 million speakers) Voiced initials still exist. The entering tone does not exist in most of the dialects.
  Chen-Xu Xiang
  (3.4 million speakers) Some of the voiced consonants are retained.
  Hengzhou Xiang
  (4.3 million speakers)
  Yong-Quan Xiang
  (6.5 million speakers) Voiced consonants still exist.
caption: Dialect map of Hunan Province. New Xiang orange, Old Xiang yellow, Chen-Xu Xiang light red. Xiangnan Tuhua dark green and medium green. 
  Note other dialects are shown in larger areas than in the next map. Hakka pink, Southwestern Mandarin light blue, medium blue, light green, and Waxiang dark blue
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