The Zhi-Yan dialect () is a

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

Jin Chinese Jin () is a group of Chinese linguistic varieties spoken by roughly 48 million people in northern China, including most of Shanxi province, much of central Inner Mongolia, and adjoining areas in Hebei, Henan, and Shaanxi provinces. The status ...

spoken within much of

Yan'an Yan'an; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternatively spelled as Yenan is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanbei region of Shaanxi Province of China, province, China, bordering Shanxi to the east and Gansu to the west. It administers several c ...

Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. The dialect is spoken throughout

Baota District Baota District ( zh, s=宝塔区, t=寶塔區, p=Bǎotǎ Qū) is a district in Yan'an, Shaanxi, China. The district has an area of , and a permanent population of 497,085 as of 2019. Baota District serves as Yan'an's administrative center, hosting ...

Zhidan County Zhidan () is a county under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Yan'an, in the northwest of Shaanxi Province, China, bordering Gansu Province to the south. The county has an area of , and a population of 141,600 as of 2012. Zhidan C ...

, and

Yanchuan County Yanchuan County () is a county under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Yan'an, in the northeast of Shaanxi Province, bordering Shanxi Province across the Yellow River to the east. The county spans in area, and has a permanent p ...

. Located in a transition zone between the Jin Chinese of

northern Shaanxi Northern Shaanxi or Shaanbei () is the portion of China's Shaanxi province north of the Huanglong Mountain and the Meridian Ridge (the so-called "Guanzhong north mountains"), and is both a geographic as well as a cultural area. It makes up the so ...

and

Guanzhong Guanzhong (, formerly romanization of Chinese, romanised as Kwanchung) region, also known as the Guanzhong Basin, Wei River Basin, or uncommonly as the Shaanzhong region, is a historical region of China corresponding to the crescentic graben str ...

, the Zhi-Yan dialect shows some transitional characteristics in both tones and

vocabulary A vocabulary (also known as a lexicon) is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word ''vocabulary'' originated from the Latin , meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of languag ...

. With the exception of the

checked tone A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the western phonetic sense but rathe ...

, the tones between the Zhi-Yan dialect and the nearby are the same. Among ancient checked tone syllables, only fully voiced consonants still retain the checked tone, while clear and sub-voiced syllables are spoken with a high tone ({{Lang-zh, c=陰平, p=yīnpíng). Most tones are similar to those spoken in Guanzhong. The Zhi-Yan dialect retains checked tones found in northern Shaanxi Jin, but not the checked tones found in

Central Plains Mandarin Central Plains Mandarin, or ''Zhongyuan'' Mandarin (), is a variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in the central and southern parts of Shaanxi, Henan, southwestern part of Shanxi, southern part of Gansu, far southern part of Hebei, northern Anhui, n ...

. The Zhi-Yan dialect was heavily influences by a mass migration of people from nearby Yulin, who moved to Yan'an en masse in the 1930s after a

famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food caused by several possible factors, including, but not limited to war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, an Financial crisis, economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenom ...

struck Yulin. As such, Zhi-Yan speakers descended from those who migrated from Yulin retain characteristics not found in other Zhi-Yan speakers, who share more characteristics with people from Guanzhong. The Zhi-Yan dialect is spoken in

and

References

Jin Chinese Yan'an Zhidan County Baota District