Definitions for "Xiang"
Xiāng (湘語/湘语), also known as Hunan, Hunanese, or Hsiang is a Chinese language spoken mainly in the Hunan province, but also in a few other provinces such as Sichuan and Guangxi. It is a group of languages of immense interest to Chinese dialectologists and historical phonologists because some of its languages still exhibit the three-way distinction of Middle Chinese obstruents, preserving the voiced stops, fricatives and affricates as in the modern Wu languages. However, it is surrounded by Mandarin in the north, west and south, thus showing a lot of Mandarin influences.