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Jin (晋语 / 晉語)
Native to: China
Region: most of Shanxi province; central Inner Mongolia; parts of Hebei, Henan, Shaanxi
Native speakers: 63.05 million (2012)
Language family: Sino-Tibetan

is a group of Chinese dialects or languages spoken by roughly 63 million people in northern China. Its geographical distribution covers most of Shanxi province except for the lower Fen River valley, much of central Inner Mongolia and adjoining areas in Hebei, Henan, and Shaanxi provinces. The status of Jin is disputed among linguists; some prefer to classify it as a dialect of Mandarin, but others set it apart as a closely related, but separate sister-language to Mandarin.

Until the 1980s, Jin dialects were universally included within Mandarin Chinese. In 1985, however, Li Rong proposed that Jin should be considered a separate top-level dialect group, similar to Yue or Wu. His main criterion was that Jin dialects had preserved the entering tone as a separate category, still marked with a glottal stop as in the Wu dialects, but distinct in this respect from most other Mandarin dialects.

Other linguists have subsequently adopted this classification. However, some linguists still do not agree that Jin should be considered a separate dialect group for these reasons:

The use of the entering tone as a diagnostic feature is inconsistent with the way that all other Chinese dialect groups have been delineated based on the reflexes of the Middle Chinese voiced initials.
Certain other Mandarin dialects also preserve the glottal stop, especially the Jianghuai dialects, and so far, no linguist has claimed that these dialects should also be split from Mandarin.
The Jin group lacks a prominent representative dialect. Several authors have used Taiyuan dialect as a representative, but its vocabulary is close to Mandarin dialects.

In the Language Atlas of China, Jin was divided into 8 subgroups:

Bingzhou
spoken in central Shanxi (the ancient Bing Province), including Taiyuan.
Lüliang
spoken in western Shanxi (including Lüliang) and northern Shaanxi.
Shangdang
spoken in the area of Changzhi (ancient Shangdang) in southeastern Shanxi.
Wutai
spoken in parts of northern Shanxi (including Wutai County) and central Inner Mongolia.
Da–Bao
spoken in parts of northern Shanxi and central Inner Mongolia, including Baotou.
Zhang-Hu
spoken in Zhangjiakou in northwestern Hebei and parts of central Inner Mongolia, including Hohhot.
Han-Xin
spoken in southeastern Shanxi, southern Hebei (including Handan) and northern Henan (including Xinxiang).
Zhi-Yan
spoken in Zhidan County and Yanchuan County in northern Shaanxi.

LINKS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Chinese
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBi0hv3aY5iEl6oJbTaro_nXBJya2kVJu
Music: 人说山西好风光" - "The beautiful scenery of Shanxi"

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