Old Xiang

Old Xiang
Lou-Shao
Native to	People's Republic of China
Region	Hunan
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Xiang Old Xiang
Writing system	Chinese characters
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
ISO 639-6	louo
Glottolog	luos1238
Linguasphere	79-AAA-eab
Old Xiang is in blue. It is in contact with New Xiang (red), Ji-Xu Xiang (pink), Southwestern Mandarin, Gan, and Yong-Quan Xiang (dark green, south).

Old Xiang, also known as Lou-Shao (simplified Chinese: 娄邵片へん; traditional Chinese: 婁邵片へん; pinyin: Lóu Shào piàn; lit. 'Loudi and Shaoshan subgroup'), is a conservative Xiang Chinese language. It is spoken in the central areas of Hunan where it has been to some extent isolated from the neighboring Chinese languages, Southwestern Mandarin and Gan languages, and it retains the voiced plosives of Middle Chinese, which are otherwise only preserved in Wu languages like Shanghainese. See Shuangfeng dialect for details. Mao Zedong was a speaker of Old Xiang with his native Shaoshan dialect.

Dialects and regions

The Shuangfeng dialect is representative.

Subdialect	Main Counties
Xiang-Shuang	Xiangtan, Shuangfeng, Shaoshan, Urban Loudi, Anhua*, Hengshan*
Lian-Mei	Lianyuan, Lengshuijiang*, Anhua, Ningxiang*
Xinhua	Xinhua, Lengshuijiang
Shao-Wu	Urban Shaoyang, Wugang, Shaodong, Shaoyang County, Xinshao, Longhui*, Xinning, Chengbu, Dongkou*
Sui-Hui	Suining*, Huitong
*Small part of this territory is Hunanese-speaking.

Laba Miao (喇叭らっぱ苗なえ话) is an Old Xiang dialect spoken by the Laba Miao people of western Guizhou. In Guizhou, it is spoken in Qinglong County 晴はれ隆たかし县 (including in Changliu Township 长流乡), Pu'an County 普ふ安やす县, Liuzhi County 六ろく枝えだ县, Shuicheng County, 水城みずき县, and Panzhou 盘州.

Matanghua (麻あさ塘话) is a variety of Old Xiang that is spoken in Matang Ethnic Miao Township (麻あさ塘苗族ぞく乡), Suining County, Hunan.

Further reading

• 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.