Jìn

Jin is the Sinitic speech of the Shanxi loess plateau, covering most of Shanxi, central Inner Mongolia and neighboring parts of Hebei, Henan and Shaanxi. It takes its name from Jin, the ancient Spring and Autumn state of these lands. Yang Xiong's Fangyan, compiled in the Western Han, records the northwestern dialects of Zhao and Wei in this region.

Scholars trace its phonology to the northwestern pronunciation of the Tang, 618 to 907, and the Five Dynasties, 907 to 960, a link seen in the Tangut-Chinese wordbook of the Western Xia.

Unlike surrounding Mandarin dialects Jin keeps the entering tone as a distinct glottal-stop category, and builds words with rare prefixes and split-syllable forms. Long treated as a Mandarin branch for its partial mutual intelligibility with them, Jin is written in Chinese characters, with the Taiyuan dialect as its representative.