Guanzhong dialect

The Guanzhong dialect (simplified Chinese: 关中话; traditional Chinese: 關中話; pinyin: Guānzhōnghuà) is a dialect of Central Plains Mandarin spoken in Shaanxi's Guanzhong region, including the prefecture-level capital city of Xi'an. Since the speech of Xi'an is considered the prototypical Guanzhong speech, the Guanzhong dialect is sometimes referred to as Xi'anese (simplified Chinese: 陕西话; traditional Chinese: 陝西話; pinyin: Shǎnxīhuà or simplified Chinese: 西安话; traditional Chinese: 西安話; pinyin: Xī'ānhuà).

The varieties spoken in northern and southern Shaanxi differ from that of Guanzhong, such as that of Hanzhong, which is a Southwestern Mandarin lect, more closely related to Sichuanese.

In general, the Guanzhong dialect can be classified into two sub-dialects: the Xifu dialect (西府话; 西府話), or the 'dialect of the western prefectures', which is spoken in the west of Xi'an, in Baoji of Shaanxi Province; Tianshui, Qingyang, Pingliang, Longnan of Gansu Province; and south of Guyuan of Ningxia Province, and the Dongfu dialect (东府话; 東府話), or the 'dialect of the eastern prefectures', spoken in Xi'an, Weinan, Tongchuan, Xianyang and Shangluo of Shaanxi Province.

Due to the prevalence of Standard Mandarin in urban areas such as Xi'an, the younger generations tend to speak Standard Mandarin or Guanzhong-accented Standard Mandarin. Due to the lexical and grammatical similarities between Northern Mandarin varieties, attrition of these dialects is more serious. Authorities have moved in to document the local dialects to preserve them.^: 3

Although Xi'an was established by the 11^th century BCE, the modern Mandarin dialect spoken likely has very little relation to Zhou, Qin, or Han Dynasty speech, as Old Mandarin originated in the Yuan Dynasty. A recorded 73.5% of young people in Xi'an city can proficiently utilise the dialect. The remainder of this article describes the urban variety of Xi'an.