Xiang Chinese in the context of "Spoken Chinese"

New Xiang, also known as Chang-Yi (simplified Chinese: 长益片; traditional Chinese: 長益片; pinyin: Chǎng Yì piàn; lit. 'Changsha and Yiyang subgroup') is the dominant form of Xiang Chinese. It is spoken in northeastern areas of Hunan, China adjacent to areas where Southwestern Mandarin and Gan are spoken. Under their influence, it has lost some of the conservative phonological characteristics that distinguish Old Xiang. While most linguists follow Yuan Jiahua in describing New Xiang as a subgroup of Xiang Chinese, Zhou Zhenhe and You Rujie classify it as Southwestern Mandarin. However, New Xiang is still very difficult for Mandarin speakers to understand, particularly the old style of New Xiang.

Changsha is the capital of Hunan, China. Located in the lower reaches of the Xiang River in northeastern Hunan, it is the 15th most populous city in China with a population of 10,513,100, the third-most populous city in Central China, and the most livable city in China.

The city forms a part of the Greater Changsha Metropolitan Region along with Zhuzhou and Xiangtan, also known as the Changzhutan City Cluster. Greater Changsha was named one of the 13 emerging mega-cities in China in 2012 by the Economist Intelligence Unit. It is also a National Comprehensive Transportation Hub, and one of the first National Famous Historical and Cultural Cities in China. Changshanese, a kind of Xiang Chinese, is spoken in the downtown area, while Ningxiangnese and Liuyangnese are also spoken in the counties and cities under its jurisdiction. As of the 2020 Chinese census, the prefecture-level city of Changsha had a population of 10,047,914 inhabitants.

Old Xiang, also known as Lou-Shao (simplified Chinese: 娄邵片; traditional Chinese: 婁邵片; pinyin: Lóu Shào piàn; lit. 'Loudi and Shaoshan subgroup'), is a conservative Xiang Chinese language. It is spoken in the central areas of Hunan where it has been to some extent isolated from the neighboring Chinese languages, Southwestern Mandarin and Gan languages, and it retains the voiced plosives of Middle Chinese, which are otherwise only preserved in Wu languages like Shanghainese. See Shuangfeng dialect for details. Mao Zedong was a speaker of Old Xiang with his native Shaoshan dialect.

Chengdu-Chongqing dialect or Cheng–Yu (Chinese: 成渝; pinyin: Chéng-Yú; Sichuanese Pinyin: Cenyu, locally [tsʰən˨˩y˨˩]) is the most widely used branch of Southwestern Mandarin, with about 90 million speakers. It is named after Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan, and Chongqing, which was under the administration of the province of Sichuan from 1954 to 1997. It is spoken mainly in northern and eastern Sichuan, the northeastern part of the Chengdu Plain, several cities or counties in southwestern Sichuan (Panzhihua, Dechang, Yanyuan, Huili and Ningnan), southern Shaanxi and western Hubei.

This uniform dialect is formed after the great migration movement in Ming and Qing dynasty, and is greatly influenced by the Chinese varieties of Mandarin the immigrants spoke from Hubei, Xiang and Gan. So it keeps fewer characteristics of Sichuan's original Ba-Shu Chinese than other Sichuanese dialects, such as Minjiang dialect.

The Hunanese people (Chinese: 湖南人; pinyin: Húnán rén; Xiang Chinese pronunciation: [/ɸu¹³ l̃an¹³ ʐən¹³/]), also known as Xiang people or Xiang-speaking Chinese, are a Han Chinese ethnic subgroup originating from Hunan province in China who speak Xiang Chinese. Some Xiang-speaking people are also found in the adjacent provinces of certain areas of Guilin, Guangxi and Guizhou.