Xiang
Hunanese
湘語/湘语
"Xiang Language" written in Chinese characters
Native to	China
Region	Central and southwestern Hunan, northern Guangxi, parts of Guizhou, Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Hubei provinces
Ethnicity	Hunanese
Native speakers	38 million (2021)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Xiang
Varieties	Old Xiang New Xiang Chen-Xu Xiang Hengzhou Xiang Yong-Quan Xiang
Writing system	Chinese characters
Language codes
ISO 639-3	hsn
Glottolog	xian1251
Linguasphere	79-AAA-e
[image reference needed]
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	湘語
Simplified Chinese	湘语
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Xiāng Yǔ Xiang IPA [sian˧ y˦˩][2]
Hunanese
Traditional Chinese	湖南話
Simplified Chinese	湖南话
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Húnán Huà Xiang IPA ɣu13nia13ɣo21

Xiang or Hsiang (Chinese: 湘; Changsha Xiang: [sian˧ y˦˩],^[2] Mandarin: [ɕi̯aŋ˥ y˨˩˦]), 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, Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Hubei provinces. Scholars divided Xiang into five subgroups, Chang-Yi, Lou-Shao, Hengzhou, Chen-Xu and Yong-Quan.^[3] 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.^[4]

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^[5] and Chinese Communist Revolution.^[6] Some examples of Xiang speakers are Mao Zedong, Zuo Zongtang, Huang Xing and Ma Ying-jeou.^[7]

Historical linguists such as W. South Coblin have been in doubt of a taxonomic grouping of Xiang.^[8] However, counterargument suggests that shared innovations can be identified for Xiang.^[9][10]

Prehistorically, the main inhabitants were the ancient country of Ba, Nanman, Baiyue and other tribes whose languages cannot be studied. During the Warring States period, large numbers of Chu migrated into Hunan. Their language blended with that of the original natives to produce a new dialect, Nanchu (Southern Chu).^[11] During Qin and Han dynasty, most part of today's Eastern Hunan belonged to Changsha Kingdom. According to Yang Xiong's Fangyan, people in this region spoke Southern Chu, which is considered^{[by whom?]} the ancestor of Xiang Chinese today.^{[12][verification needed]}

During the Tang dynasty, a large-scale emigration took place with people emigrating from the north to the south, bringing Middle Chinese into Hunan.^[13] Today's Xiang still keeps some Middle Chinese words, such as 嬉 (to have fun), 薅 (to weed), 行 (to walk). Entering tone vowels started weakening in Hunan at this time. Migrants who came from the North mainly settled in northern Hunan, followed by western Hunan. For this reason, northern and western Hunan are Mandarin districts.^[11]

Migrants from Jiangxi concentrated mainly in southeastern Hunan and present day Shaoyang and Xinhua districts. They came for two reasons:^[11] The first is that Jiangxi became too crowded, and its people sought expansion. The second is that Hunan suffered greatly during the Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty, when there was mass slaughter.^[14] The late Yuan dynasty peasant uprising caused a great many casualties in Hunan.

During the Ming dynasty, a large-scale emigration from Jiangxi to Hunan took place. In the early Ming dynasty, large numbers of migrants came from Jiangxi and settled in present day Yueyang, Changsha, Zhuzhou, Xiangtan, and Hengyang districts. After the middle of the Ming dynasty, migrants came more diverse, and came more for economic reasons and commerce.^[11] Gan, which was brought by settlers from Jiangxi, influenced Xiang. The speech in east Hunan differentiated into New Xiang during that period.

Quanzhou County became part of Guangxi province after the adjustment of administrative divisions in the Ming dynasty. Some features of Xiang at that time were kept in this region.

Since the classification of Yuan Jiahua (1960), Xiang has been considered one of seven major groups of varieties of Chinese.^[15] 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.^[16]

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.^[17]

Pervasive influence from Mandarin dialects has made Xiang dialects difficult to classify.^[17] 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.^[18] The Changsha dialect is usually taken as representative of New Xiang, while Shuangfeng dialect represents Old Xiang.^[19] 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.^[20] Indeed, Zhou Zhenhe and You Rujie (unlike most authors) classified New Xiang as part of Southwestern Mandarin.^[21][22]

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.^[23] 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.

Xiang is spoken by over 36 million people in China, primarily in the most part of the Hunan province, and in the five counties of Quanzhou, Guanyang, Ziyuan, Xing'an and Longsheng in northeastern Guangxi province, and in several places of Guizhou and Sichuan provinces. It is abutted by Southwestern Mandarin-speaking areas to the north and west, as well as by Gan in the eastern parts of Hunan and Jiangxi. Xiang is also in contact with the Qo-Xiong Miao and Tujia languages in West Hunan.

• Bào, Hòuxīng 鮑厚星; Chén, Huī 陳暉 (2005). "Xiāngyǔ de fēnqū" 湘語的分區 [The divisions of Xiang languages]. Fāngyán: 261–270.
• Jiang, Junfeng (June 2006). Xiāngxiāng fāngyán yǔyīn yánjiū 湘乡方言语音研究 [A Phonological Study of Xiangxiang Dialect] (PhD thesis). Hunan Normal University. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
• Kurpaska, Maria (2010). Chinese Language(s): A Look Through the Prism of "The Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects". Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-021914-2.
• Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29653-6.
• Wu, Yunji (2005). A synchronic and diachronic study of the grammar of the Chinese Xiang dialects. Trends in linguistics. Vol. 162. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-018366-8.
• Yan, Margaret Mian (2006). Introduction to Chinese Dialectology. LINCOM Europa. ISBN 978-3-89586-629-6.
• Yang, Shifeng (楊時逢) (1974). 湖南方言調查報告 (1-2). 中央研究院歷史語言研究所專刊[第66卷]. Taipei: 中央研究院歷史語言研究所. ISBN 978-0009121760..
• Yuan, Jiahua (1989) [1960]. Hànyǔ fāngyán gàiyào 漢語方言概要 [An introduction to Chinese dialects]. Beijing: Wénzì gǎigé chūbǎnshè 文字改革出版社.
• Zhou, Zhenhe; You, Rujie (1986). Fāngyán yǔ zhōngguó wénhuà 方言与中国文化 [Dialects and Chinese culture]. Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe.

• Zeng, Ting (2020). "The Xiangxiang dialect of Chinese". Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 50 (2): 258–281. doi:10.1017/S002510031800035X, with supplementary sound recordings.

[prototypical Old Xiang]

• Wu, Nankai (2023). "Changsha Xiang Chinese". Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association: 1–15. doi:10.1017/S0025100323000075, with supplementary sound recordings.

• Xiang at Omniglot
• Hunan Provincial Gazetteer: dialects 湖南省志: 方言志^{[permanent dead link‍]}