Xiāng

Xiang is the group of Sinitic languages spoken mainly in Hunan, with outposts in northern Guangxi and the borderlands of Guizhou, Jiangxi and Hubei. Its basis was the Southern Chu dialect formed when migrants from Chu settled among the Ba and Nanman in the Warring States period; the Western Han Fangyan records this speech around the Changsha Kingdom as the ancestor of Xiang.

During the Tang dynasty, 618 to 907, northern settlers brought Middle Chinese into Hunan and the entering tone began to weaken. The Mongol conquest and late Yuan uprisings depopulated much of the province, and under the Ming, 1368 to 1644, migrants from Jiangxi brought Gan dialects to eastern Hunan.

Contact with Gan split the language into New Xiang, centered on Changsha, which lost the old voiced initials, and Old Xiang of the Lou-Shao region, which keeps the Middle Chinese distinction of voiced, voiceless and aspirated stops.