Lǎoxiāng

Old Xiang, or Lou-Shao, is the inland branch of the Xiang languages, spoken in the hills of central Hunan around Loudi, Xiangxiang and Shuangfeng; the Shuangfeng dialect is taken as its representative. Like New Xiang it descends from the Southern Chu speech recorded by the Han lexicographer Yang Xiong, born of the fusion of Chu migrants with the native Ba, Nanman and Baiyue peoples.

Sheltered by the mountains, these districts kept the voiced stops, fricatives and affricates of Middle Chinese, the three-way contrast that the lowlands lost under the flood of Jiangxi settlers after the Ming founding in 1368.

Most Lou-Shao dialects have also shed the entering tone. Through the Ming and Qing they remained the speech of Hunan's farming heartland, bordered by Southwestern Mandarin to the west and by the Miao and Tujia languages beyond the Yuan River.