12 Facts About Sichuanese Mandarin

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

Sichuanese Mandarin can be further divided into a number of dialects, Chengdu–Chongqing dialect, Minjiang dialect, Renshou–Fushun dialect, and Ya'an–Shimian dialect.

The dialect of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province and an important central city is the most representative dialect of Southwestern Sichuanese Mandarin and is used widely in Sichuan opera and other art forms of the region.

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

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

Related searches

Sichuanese Mandarin 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 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.

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

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

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