Old Xiang

Old Xiang
Lou-Shao
Native to	People's Republic of China
Region	Hunan
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Xiang Old Xiang
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
ISO 639-6	louo
Glottolog	luos1238[1]
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 (娄邵片 / 婁邵片) is a conservative form of Xiang Chinese. It is spoken in the central areas of Hunan where it has been to some extent isolated from neighboring Chinese varieties, Mandarin and Gan, and it retains the voiced plosives of Middle Chinese, which are otherwise only preserved in Wu dialects like Shanghainese. See Shuangfeng dialect for details.

Dialects and Regions

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.

References

1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Luoshao". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.