Changsha dialect


Changsha dialect is a dialect of New Xiang Chinese. It is spoken predominantly in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. It is not mutually intelligible with Standard Mandarin, the official language of China.

Classification

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 voiced plosives and affricates. 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 unaspirated consonants. Although most Chinese dialectologists treat New Xiang as part of the group, Zhou Zhenhe and You Rujie classify it as Southwestern Mandarin.

Geographic distribution

Changsha dialect is spoken in the city of Changsha and its neighbouring suburbs. However, there are some slight differences between the urban and suburban speech. For instance, the retroflex set is only heard in the suburbs, but not in the city and 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 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 Middle Chinese obstruents, which are changed to voiceless unaspirated consonants. It has also lost all the final plosives found in the rù tone in Middle Chinese.

Consonants

Vowels

Tones

Changsha has 5 tones, which are neutralized in syllables ending in a stop.
Tone numberTone nameTone contourDescription
1yin ping or mid
2yang ping or rising
3shang sheng or falling
4yin qu or high
5yang qu or low
6ru sheng or checked