Central Plains Mandarin

Central Plains Mandarin, or Zhongyuan Mandarin (), is a variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in the central and southern parts of Shaanxi, Henan, southwestern part of Shanxi, southern part of Gansu, far southern part of Hebei, northern Anhui, northern parts of Jiangsu, southern Xinjiang and southern Shandong.

The archaic dialect in Peking opera is a form of Zhongyuan Mandarin.

Among Hui people, Zhongyuan Mandarin is sometimes written with the Arabic alphabet, called Xiao'erjing ("Children's script").

Subdialects

• Zheng-Kai (郑开) region: e.g. Kaifeng (开封) dialect, Zhengzhou (郑州) dialect
• Luo-Song (洛嵩) region: e.g. Luoyang dialect (洛阳话)
• Nan-Lu (南阳) region: e.g. Nanyang (南阳) dialect
• Luo-Xiang (漯项) region: e.g. Zhumadian (驻马店) dialect
• Shang-Fu (商阜) region: e.g. Shangqiu (商丘) dialect, Fuyang (阜阳) dialect
• Xin-Beng (信蚌) region: e.g. Xinyang (信阳) dialect, Bengbu (蚌埠) dialect
• Yan-He (兖菏) region: e.g. Jining (济宁) dialect
• Xu-Huai (徐淮) region: e.g. Xuzhou dialect (徐州话)
• Fenhe (汾河) region: e.g. Linfen (临汾) dialect, Wanrong (万荣) dialect
• Guanzhong region (关中), e.g. Xi'an (西安) dialect
• Qin-Long (秦陇) region: e.g. Xining (西宁) dialect, Dunhuang (敦煌) dialect
• Longzhong (陇中) region: e.g. Tianshui (天水) dialect, Dingxi (定西) dialect
• Hezhou (河州) Region: e.g. Gangou dialect (甘沟话) (influenced by Monguor)
• Nanjiang (南疆) Region: e.g. Yanqi dialect, Tulufan dialect
• Dungan language, written in Cyrillic, introduced many Russian loanwords, spoken mainly in Chu Valley and Fergana Valley in Central Asia

Phonology

In some varieties of Central Plains Mandarin, some phonological changes have affected certain syllables but not Standard Chinese.

Standard Mandarin's , and have shifted to before . has shifted to before in some varieties, such as the Yanhe subgroup and the Guanzhong subgroup.

The phenomenon of and being shifted to before [u] and [o] can be found in Linyou (麟游) and Wugong (武功)

See also

• Zhongyuan culture
• Central Plains (China), also called "Zhongyuan"

References

Citations

Sources