Many people in northern Myanmar actually speak Southwest Mandarin. What's going on here?

Distribution of Mandarin in Southwest China

Ancient China was vast and rich in natural resources, and many people lived everywhere. With the changes of history, the mobility of population and the influence of topography, the Han people are scattered all over China. People in these different places communicate with each other and form their own unique language in the passage of time. This has formed the main dialect of Chinese today.

There are seven dialects in modern Chinese, including Northern Dialect, Wu Dialect, Hunan Dialect, Hakka Dialect, Min Dialect, Cantonese Dialect and Gan Dialect. In some complex dialect areas, dialect slices (also called sub-dialects) are re-divided. Southwest mandarin is a sub-dialect below the northern dialect, which is Chinese, with a language family above it, and a language family above it. Let me give you an example, such as Sino-Tibetan-Chinese-Chinese-Northern Dialect-Southwest Mandarin.

Dialect distribution

Southwest Mandarin is a dialect formed by the integration of immigrants from "Jiangxi filling Huguang" and "Huguang filling Sichuan" in Ming Dynasty and immigrants from different places in Ming and Qing Dynasties. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, there was chaos and war in China. Sichuan, Huguang and other places are the main battlefields, leading to people's poverty and a sharp drop in population. In order to fill the vacancy in these places, a large number of immigrants began in the Ming Dynasty. With the continuous integration with the southwest ethnic minorities, as well as the continuous integration of immigrants from Jiangnan, Huguang and Jiangxi, the southwest mandarin of Ming Dynasty was formed. The book "Yun Lue Yi Tong" in the orthodox period of Ming Dynasty reflects that the pronunciation prevailing in southwest China is obviously different from that of Mandarin. At this time, the southwest mandarin has begun to take shape.

Huguang fills Sichuan

Southwest Mandarin is mainly distributed in today's Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hubei and other provinces and cities, in addition to Guangxi, Hunan, Shaanxi, Jiangxi and other provinces and cities and parts of northern Southeast Asia. Southwest Mandarin is also called Shangjiang Mandarin. Its main feature is to assign the whole tone to a certain tone or tone value.

Segmentation of southwest mandarin

Southwest Mandarin is distributed in 9 provinces and cities including Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Shaanxi and Jiangxi. It is divided into 6 pieces and 22 pieces, and 544 counties and cities are mainly divided into Sichuan and Guizhou pieces, Xishu pieces, Western Sichuan pieces, Yunnan pieces, Huguang pieces and Guiliu pieces, which are widely used. There is no differentiation in the ancient entering tone of Southwest Mandarin, and other dialects are preserved or mixed (mainly yangping mixed tone). Generally speaking, it is relatively complete. For example, in Sichuan dialect and Chongqing dialect, the entering tone is mixed with the rising tone as a whole; A small piece of happiness enters the sound as a whole and sends it away; Dumb patches are sent into flat tones as a whole; On the whole, the entering tone is preserved in the small piece of Minjiang River, and even the ending of the stop tone is preserved in some areas. Southwest Mandarin is really quite catchy.

Chongqing dialect

Southwest Mandarin is not only used in today's China area, but also has official status in the first special zone of Shan State in Myanmar (Kokang) and the second special zone of Shan State in Myanmar (Wa State). It is one of the few dialects with official status. Other dialects with official status include Cantonese (China Special Administrative Region and China Special Administrative Region), Minnan (Taiwan Province Province of China) and Hakka (Taiwan Province Province of China and Surinam Republic). This shows the strong vitality of Southwest Mandarin. When you go to Chongqing now, you can also see that many locals communicate in Southwest Mandarin, unlike Changsha, Nanchang and Hangzhou, which have already communicated in Mandarin.

Proportion of cities in major dialect areas using dialects

Now many local dialects are threatened by Putonghua, such as weak dialects such as Wu dialect, Gan dialect, Xiang dialect and Min dialect. These dialects are basically assimilated by today's Mandarin. For example, many primary schools in Xiamen now teach Minnan. At the moment when these dialects are bleak, only Southwest Mandarin has equal capital with Mandarin, and it is still growing. Southwest Mandarin is the language with the largest number of users (dialects are naturally languages), with more than 270 million users, far exceeding other dialects. Even abroad, it is defined as the official language. More importantly, it is simple, unlike Wu dialect, which can't be understood across the street. Therefore, Wu dialect is dying out, and the tone of Southwest Mandarin is mainly rising tone, which can cross hundreds of thousands of square kilometers without barriers. Therefore, such a language will develop and gradually annex small languages in other regions.

At 1955' s "National Character Law Reform Conference", we decided who is the basic dialect of Putonghua by voting. Southwest officials lost to Beijing Mandarin by one vote. Beijing Mandarin has 52 votes, followed by Wu dialect with 46 votes and Cantonese with 25 votes. Other 1 1 dialects have fewer votes. It can also be seen that the status of Southwest Mandarin is very high, no less than Mandarin.

The grammar system of Southwest Mandarin has great consistency with Putonghua, which has developed with Putonghua, and the modernization achievements of modern Chinese written language can be used for it, which has very good applicability. Therefore, there are no problems such as Wu dialect, Min dialect and Hakka dialect, such as the writing and modernization of Chinese. There are only different expressions in the vocabulary of Southwest Mandarin, but there are few nonstandard dialect words in Chinese characters. The existing dictionaries in China can directly serve the Southwest Mandarin. Southwest Mandarin is also very successful.