The Xiangxiang dialect of Chinese

Xiangxiang ([ɕjaŋ44 ɕjaŋ44]) is a Chinese dialect spoken by a population of 885,552 in the urban area of Xiangxiang (CN-430381), a city located in the centre of Hunan Province, China (Jiang 2008: 6). It belongs to Xiang ([ɕjaŋ44], ISO: 639-3: [hsn]), which is one of the ten major dialect groups of Chinese (LAC 2012).1 Xiang has two main subgroups, New Xiang and Old Xiang (Zhou & You 1985, Yuan 2001), and Xiangxiang is often cited as a representative dialect of Old Xiang (H. Bao 2001, Jiang 2008).2 Rather than denoting different historical stages, ‘old’ and ‘new’ reflect more and less conservative varieties among contemporary Xiang dialect speakers. Some impressionistic descriptions of the sounds and tones of Xiangxiang dialect will be found in Chao & Wu (1974), S. Zeng (2001) and Jiang (2008).