Zhongjiang Chinese

Zhongjiang Chinese (中江话) is a variety of Mandarin Chinese, one of the ten language families in China (Mandarin, Cantonese, Xiang, Min, Gan, etc.,). Sometimes the term “Mandarin” is also used to refer to the national lingua franca “Putonghua”. We refer to the national lingua franca as “Standard Mandarin” and reserve the term Mandarin (官话) to refer to the language family, as distinct from other families, e.g., Cantonese, Xiang, Min, Gan, etc. Within Mandarin, Zhongjiang is a member of the Southwestern dialects (西南官话) ( Language Atlas of China 1988 ). It is spoken in the urban areas of Zhongjiang county (中江县) in Sichuan province (四川省 ) of China. Zhongjiang county belongs to the Deyang (德阳) region, which is located in the middle of Sichuan province, about 100 kilometers northeast from the provincial capital of Chengdu (成都). Zhongjiang is just beyond the Chengdu Plain (成都平原), so the terrain is mostly hilly, with little flat land. It has a population of 1.37 million residents and an area of 2,200km 2 (data from Zhongjiang official website, updated July 7, 2021).