Southwestern Mandarin
Upper Yangtze Mandarin
Region	Sichuan,Yunnan,Guangxi,Guizhou,Hubei, others
Native speakers	260 million (2012)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Mandarin Southwestern Mandarin
Official status
Official language in	Myanmar (Wa State,Kokang Self-Administered Zone)
Recognised minority language in	Thailand (Chiang Rai Province,Chiang Mai Province)  Vietnam (Lào Cai Province)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
ISO 639-6	xghu
Glottolog	xina1239
Linguasphere	79-AAA-bh
[image reference needed]

Southwestern Mandarin (Chinese:西南官话;pinyin:Xīnán Guānhuà), also known asUpper Yangtze Mandarin (Chinese:上江官话;pinyin:Shàngjiāng Guānhuà), is aMandarin Chinese dialect spoken in much ofSouthwestern China, including inSichuan,Yunnan,Chongqing,Guizhou, most parts ofHubei, the northwestern part ofHunan, the northern part ofGuangxi and some southern parts ofShaanxi andGansu.

Southwestern Mandarin is spoken by roughly 260 million people.^[1] If considered a language distinct from central Mandarin, it would be the eighth-most spoken language by native speakers in the world, behind Mandarin itself,Spanish,English,Hindi,Portuguese,Arabic andBengali.

Modern Southwestern Mandarin was formed by the waves of immigrants brought to the regions during theMing^[2][3] andQing Dynasties.^[4] Because of the comparatively recent move, such dialects show more similarity to modern Standard Mandarin than to othervarieties of Chinese likeCantonese orHokkien. For example, like most Southern Chinese dialects, Southwestern Mandarin does not possess theretroflex consonants (zh, ch, sh, r) of Standard Mandarin, but most varieties of it also fail to retain thechecked tone that all southern dialects have. TheChengdu-Chongqing and Hubei dialects are believed to reflect aspects of the Mandarinlingua franca that was spoken during the Ming.^[5] However, some scholars believe its origins may be more similar toLower Yangtze Mandarin.^[6] Though part of the Mandarin group, Southwestern Mandarin has many striking and pronounced differences with Standard Mandarin such that until 1955, it was generally categorized alongside Cantonese andWu Chinese as a branch of Chinese varieties.^[7]

Southwestern Mandarin is commonly spoken inKokang district in NorthernMyanmar, where the population is largelyKokang. Southwestern Mandarin is also one of two official languages of theWa State, an unrecognized autonomous state withinMyanmar, alongside theWa language. Because Wa has no written form, Chinese is the official working language of the Wa State government.^[8][9] Some of its speakers, known as theChin Haw, live in Thailand.^[10] It is also spoken in parts ofNorthern Vietnam.^[11] Ethnic minorities in Vietnam'sLào Cai Province used to speak Southwestern Mandarin to each other when their languages were not mutually intelligible.^[12] Southwestern Mandarin is also used between different ethnic minorities in Yunnan,^[13][14] Guizhou^[3]: 31 and Guangxi.^[3][15][16]

Most Southwestern Mandarin dialects have, like Standard Mandarin, retained only four of the eight tones ofLate Middle Chinese. However, the entering tone has completely merged with the light-level tone in most Southwestern dialects, but in Standard Mandarin, it is seemingly randomly dispersed among the remaining tones.

Southwestern Mandarin dialects do not possess the retroflex consonants of Standard Mandarin but share most other Mandarin phonological features. Most dialects have lost the distinction between thenasal consonant/n/ and thelateral consonant/l/ and the nasal finals/-n/ and/-ŋ/. For example, the sounds "la" and "na" are generally indistinguishable, and the same is true for the sounds "fen" and "feng". Some varieties also lack a distinction between thelabiodental/f/ and the glottal/h/.

Southwestern Mandarin was classified into twelve dialect groups in theLanguage Atlas of China:^[18]

• Cheng–Yu 成渝:Chengdu andChongqing
• Dianxi 滇西 (western Yunnan): Yao–Li 姚里 and Bao–Lu 保潞 clusters
• Qianbei 黔北 (northern Guizhou)
• Kun–Gui 昆貴:Kunming andGuiyang
• Guan–Chi 灌赤 (central Sichuan fromGuan County to theChishui River and part of northern Yunnan):Minjiang 岷江, Ren–Fu 仁富, Ya–Mian 雅棉, and Li–Chuan 丽川 clusters
• Ebei 鄂北 (northern Hubei)
• Wu–Tian 武天:Wuhan andTianmen (Hubei)
• Cen–Jiang 岑江 (eastern Guizhou)
• Qiannan 黔南 (southern Guizhou)
• Xiangnan 湘南 (southern Hunan):Yongzhou andChenzhou
• Gui–Liu 桂柳 (northern Guangxi):Guilin andLiuzhou
• Chang–He 常鹤:Changde andZhangjiajie (northwestern Hunan) andHefeng County (southwestern Hubei)

In addition, theSelibu language is a mixed language with a Southwestern Mandarin base, residualZhongyuan Mandarin features,^[19] and morphosyntatic and semantic features fromAlangu Khams.^[20]

• Sichuanese dialects

• Sichuanese
• Mandarin Chinese
• Languages of Thailand
• Languages of Vietnam
• Languages of Myanmar
• Languages of Laos

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