| Old Xiang | |
|---|---|
| Lou-Shao | |
| Native to | People's Republic of China |
| Region | Hunan |
| Chinese characters | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| ISO 639-6 | louo |
| Glottolog | luos1238 |
| Linguasphere | 79-AAA-eab |
 Old Xiang is in blue. It is in contact with New Xiang (red), Ji-Xu Xiang (pink), Southwestern Mandarin, Gan, and Yong-Quan Xiang (dark green, south). | |
Old Xiang, also known as Lou-Shao (simplified Chinese: 娄邵片; traditional Chinese: 婁邵片; pinyin: Lóu Shào piàn; lit. 'Loudi and Shaoshan subgroup'), is a conservative Xiang Chinese language. It is spoken in the central areas of Hunan where it has been to some extent isolated from the neighboring Chinese languages, Southwestern Mandarin and Gan languages, and it retains the voiced plosives of Middle Chinese, which are otherwise only preserved in Wu languages like Shanghainese. See Shuangfeng dialect for details. Mao Zedong was a speaker of Old Xiang with his native Shaoshan dialect. [citation needed]