Hunanese, known to linguists as Xiang, is one of the major varieties of Chinese, spoken chiefly in Hunan province in the south-central part of the country. Estimates of speaker numbers are generally around 36 to 38 million. Xiang divides into New Xiang, typified by the speech of the provincial capital Changsha and heavily influenced by Mandarin, and Old Xiang, spoken further south, which preserves older features such as voiced consonants lost in most other Chinese varieties. Like other Chinese languages it is tonal and written with Chinese characters. Xiang is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, though most speakers today also use standard Mandarin in school and formal settings. Mao Zedong was a native Xiang speaker, a fact often mentioned about the language.
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