Xiang Alphabet

Xiang (湘语), also called Hunanese, is a Sinitic language spoken by approximately 38 million people in Hunan province in south-central China. It takes its name from the Xiang River (湘江) that runs through the province.

The main centre of Xiang speech is Changsha, the provincial capital, whose dialect has become the standard New Xiang variety. Xiang is also spoken in parts of neighbouring Sichuan, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Jiangxi provinces.

Linguists divide Xiang into two major groups based on the treatment of Middle Chinese voiced initials.

Old Xiang (also called Xiangnan or Southern Xiang) preserves voiced stops b, d, g and voiced affricate dz from Middle Chinese. This makes Old Xiang phonologically closer to Wu Chinese and Cantonese. Old Xiang is spoken in rural southern Hunan.

New Xiang (Changsha dialect and related varieties) has merged these voiced initials with their voiceless counterparts under centuries of Mandarin influence. New Xiang is the prestige variety and is more widely spoken and studied.

Xiang does not have a separate standardised writing system. Like all Chinese varieties, Xiang speakers write in standard Chinese characters (Hanzi) following Mandarin-based written Chinese conventions.

For academic and linguistic purposes, scholars use romanisation systems to represent Xiang phonetics. However, no single standardised romanisation has been universally adopted for Xiang in the way Pinyin has been for Mandarin or Jyutping for Cantonese.

Xiang and Mandarin are both Sinitic languages within the Sino-Tibetan family, but they are not mutually intelligible in spoken form despite sharing the same written Chinese character system.

Xiang has been strongly influenced by Mandarin over centuries due to geographic proximity and political factors — New Xiang dialects in particular have converged towards Mandarin in their consonant inventory. However, Xiang retains distinctive features such as the syllable-initial ng- and different vowel systems that set it apart from Standard Mandarin.

Hunan province has produced many prominent historical figures whose mother tongue was Xiang Chinese. Mao Zedong (毛泽东), founding leader of the People's Republic of China, was born in Shaoshan, Hunan, and spoke Xiang Chinese natively throughout his life.

Other notable Hunanese figures include Liu Shaoqi, the second President of China, and the historical reformer Zuo Zongtang (often transliterated as "Tso Tsung-tang"). Hunan's distinctive culture, cuisine, and dialect remain a source of regional pride.