10 Facts About Sichuanese dialects

Sichuanese dialects is more similar to Standard Chinese than southeastern Chinese varieties but is still quite divergent in phonology, vocabulary, and even grammar.

The influence of Sichuanese dialects has resulted in a distinct form of Standard Chinese that is often confused with "real" Sichuanese dialects.

Sichuanese dialects, spoken by about 120 million people, would rank 10th among languages by number of speakers if counted as a separate language.

Sichuanese dialects is mainly spoken in and around the Sichuan Basin, which includes almost all of Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality except for some Tibetan and Yi inhabited areas.

In some regions the checked tone of Sichuanese dialects has been merged into another tone, which is very different from standard Mandarin, whose checked tone has been merged irregularly into the other 4 tones.

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Tone contours of the Sichuanese dialects are highly and quite different from those of Beijing Mandarin.

In Sichuanese dialects, the first tone is a high level tone, the second tone is a low falling tone, the third tone is a high falling tone and the fourth tone is a low or mid rising tone and the fifth tone is mid or high if it's not merged, as shown in the chart below.

Vocabulary of Sichuanese dialects has three main origins: Ba-Shu, Middle Chinese and the languages of the immigrants, including Proto-Mandarin from Hubei, Xiang, Gan and Hakka, which were brought to Sichuan during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Meanwhile, new Sichuanese dialects words are developing in large cities, such as Chengdu and Chongqing, which then spread at a dramatic speed through Sichuan.

The Sichuanese dialects spoken by them is greatly influenced by the national language.