Back Mandarín jianghuai AST Mandarín jianghuai Spanish Mandarin jianghuai French Bahasa Mandarin Yangtze Hilir ID 江淮官話 Japanese 강회관화 Korean Jianghuai-Mandarijn Dutch Jianghuaimandarin NB Янцзи-хуайхеський говір Ukrainian Quan thoại Hạ Giang VI
| Lower Yangtze Mandarin | |
|---|---|
| Jianghuai Mandarin, Huai Chinese | |
| Region | Between the Huai and Yangtze Rivers, primarily in central Anhui, Jiangsu, and eastern Hubei |
| Ethnicity | Jianghuai people Subei people |
| Speakers | 86.05 million (2012)[1] |
| Written vernacular Chinese | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| ISO 639-6 | juai |
| Glottolog | jing1262 |
| Linguasphere | 79-AAA-bi |
 | |
Lower Yangtze Mandarin (traditional Chinese: 下江官話; simplified Chinese: 下江官话; pinyin: Xiàjiāng Guānhuà) 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 (traditional Chinese: 江淮官話; simplified Chinese: 江淮官话; pinyin: Jiānghuái Guānhuà), 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.