Minjiang dialect is a branch of Sichuanese

Sichuanese Mandarin

Sichuanese Mandarin , commonly known as Sichuanese, Szechuanese or Szechwanese , is a branch of Southwestern Mandarin, spoken mainly in Sichuan and Chongqing, which was part of Sichuan until 1997, and the adjacent regions of their neighboring provinces, such as Hubei, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan and...

, spoken mainly in the Minjiang River valley or along the Yangtze River

Yangtze River

The Yangtze, Yangzi or Cháng Jiāng is the longest river in Asia, and the third-longest in the world. It flows for from the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai eastward across southwest, central and eastern China before emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghai. It is also one of the...

 in the southern and western parts of the Sichuan Basin

Sichuan basin

The Sichuan Basin is a lowland region in southwestern China. Despite its historical name, it is not only synonymous to Sichuan province, comprising its central and eastern portions as well as part of Chongqing Municipality...

. There is also a language island of Minjiang dialect located in the center of Sichuan Basin covering three counties: Xichong, Yanting, and Shehong

Shehong

Shehong County is a county in central Sichuan province of China, belonging to Suining city.The county seat is Taihe , located at 30.86°N, 105.38°E...

.

The most primary characteristic of the Minjiang dialect is that the stop consonant

Stop consonant

In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...

s for checked-tone syllables in Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...

 have developed into tense vowels

Tenseness

In phonology, tenseness is a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. It has also occasionally been used to describe contrasts in consonants. Unlike most distinctive features, the feature [tense] can be interpreted only relatively, that is, in...

 to create a phonemic contrast, and in several cities and counties the tense vowels retain a following glottal stop

Glottal stop

The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

. It also keeps many characteristics of Middle Bashu's phonology and vocabulary. Due to these characteristics, the status of Minjiang dialect is disputed among linguists, with some classifying it as Southwestern Mandarin

Southwestern Mandarin

Southwestern Mandarin , also known as Upper Yangtze Mandarin , is a primary branch of Mandarin Chinese spoken by Han Chinese people throughout many regions of central and southwestern China, such as Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou, most parts of Hubei, the western part of Hunan, the northern...

, and others setting it apart as a successor of Middle Bashu.