Minjiang dialect
Minjiang dialect, is a branch of Sichuanese, spoken mainly in the Min River valley or along the Yangtze in the southern and western parts of the Sichuan Basin. There is also a language island of Minjiang dialect located in the center of the Sichuan Basin covering several counties, including all of Xichong, Yanting, and Shehong Counties, and part of Jiange, Cangxi, Nanbu, Langzhong and Bazhong.
The primary characteristic of the Minjiang dialect is that the stop consonants for checked-tone syllables in Middle Chinese have developed into tense vowels to create a phonemic contrast, and in several cities and counties the tense vowels retain a following glottal stop. It also keeps many characteristics of Ba-Shu Chinese phonology and vocabulary. Due to these characteristics, the status of Minjiang dialect is disputed among linguists, with some classifying it as Southwestern Mandarin, and others setting it apart as a successor of Ba-Shu Chinese.
