Mandarin jianghuai

Lower Yangtze Mandarin () is one of the most divergent and least mutually-intelligible of the Mandarin languages, as it neighbours the Wu, Hui, and Gan groups of Sinitic languages. It is also known as Jiang–Huai Mandarin (), named after the Yangtze (Jiang) and Huai Rivers. Lower Yangtze is distinguished from most other Mandarin varieties by the retention of a final glottal stop in words that ended in a stop consonant in Middle Chinese. During the Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty, the lingua franca of administration was based on Lower Yangtze Mandarin. In the 19th century the base shifted to the Beijing dialect. Lower Yangtze Mandarin is spoken in central Anhui, eastern Hubei, most of Jiangsu north of the Yangtze, as well as the area around Nanjing. The number of speakers was estimated in 1987 at 67 million. The Language Atlas of China divides Lower Yangtze Mandarin into three branches: Hongchao dialects The largest and most widespread branch, mostly concentrated in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, with smaller areas in Zhejiang province. The best-known variety is Nanjing dialect. Other cities in the area are Hefei in the west and Yangzhou, Zhenjiang and Yancheng in the east. Tong-Tai / Tai–Ru Mostly spoken in the eastern Jiangsu prefectures of Taizhou and Nantong (including Rugao). Huang–Xiao Mostly spoken in the prefectures of Huanggang and Xiaogan in eastern Hubei province and the area around Jiujiang in northern Jiangxi, with an island in western Hubei around Zhushan, and another in Anhui around Anqing. There are also small islands of Jianghuai Mandarin (Jūnjiāhuà 軍家話) throughout Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan and Fujian provinces, brought to these areas during the Ming dynasty by soldiers from Jiangsu, Anhui and Henan during the reign of Hongwu Emperor. The Huizhou dialects, spoken in southern Anhui, share different features with Wu, Gan and Lower Yangtze Mandarin, making them difficult to classify. Earlier scholars had assigned to them one or other of those groups or to a top-level group of their own.