Han immigrants

Southwest Mandarin is a kind of northern dialect, which is mainly used in seven regions in southwest China, including Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan, Hubei and Guangxi, with a total population of about 300 million. Why does the southwest speak the northern dialect when it is so far away from the north?

The main reason is immigration. As early as the end of the Zhou Dynasty, the vassal state of Qin destroyed Bashu and entered the Sichuan Basin. Chu also ruled in Hunan and Hubei for many years. From then on, the Han people began to slowly migrate to the southwest. In 2 19 BC, Qin Shihuang went south and the Han people moved to Guangxi. Later, after the reunification of the Han Dynasty, the Han people have widely lived in the southwest. Since the Three Kingdoms period, there have been wars and natural disasters in the Central Plains, and countless people have moved to the southwest. For example, during the period of Huang Chao in the late Tang Dynasty, the route of Han people moving into Sichuan was mainly crossing the Qinling Mountains. The main body of immigrants is the Central Plains Han people who speak northern dialects.

The Ming and Qing Dynasties was an important period for Han people to emigrate to Southwest China on a large scale, and Southwest Mandarin was gradually formed through the continuous integration of dialects during this period. At the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, Huguang area was one of the main battlefields for the Yuan army to fight against the peasant rebels, and the war led to a sharp drop in the local population. Therefore, in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, there appeared for the first time the migration tide of "Jiangxi filling Huguang" and "Huguang filling Sichuan", and a large number of immigrants moved to the southwest.

The great migration in Ming dynasty completely changed the pattern of southwest China with ethnic minorities as the main body. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Han nationality had changed from a minority to a majority in southwest China. Its sources are mainly Jiangnan, Huguang and Jiangxi.

We can prove from the Historical Records of Southwest China in Ming Dynasty that the Southwest Mandarin had already taken shape. In the early stage of immigration, due to the diversity of population sources, villages and towns are mixed, and languages are different, which makes it inconvenient to communicate with each other. In order to solve this problem, the local government advocates learning Mandarin, which is mainly based on northern dialects, so that most people can understand it. Through mutual learning and integration, the present Southwest Mandarin has been formed, which is a northern dialect with southern characteristics.

Later, after the peasant uprising in the late Ming Dynasty, especially in Zhang, the population of Sichuan decreased sharply. During the reign of Shunzhi and Kangxi in Qing Dynasty, there was another wave of immigrants. Huguang immigrants account for more than half of the total number of immigrants. After the Qing dynasty, a large number of Han people also entered the areas previously controlled by ethnic minorities, and gradually spread all over the southwest. Southwest Mandarin has also developed into the main language, and with the spread of immigrants, it has been expanding and transported to the surrounding areas, which has a very strong vitality.