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Jin is spoken over most of Shanxi province, except for the lower Fen River valley; much of central Inner Mongolia; as well as adjourning areas in Hebei, Henan, and Shaanxi provinces. Cities covered within this area include Taiyuan, Zhangjiakou, Hohhot, Jiaozuo , and Yulin. In total Jin is spoken by roughly 45 million people.
Like all other varieties of Chinese, there is plenty of dispute as to whether Jin is a language or a dialect. See here for the issues surrounding this dispute.
| Jin (晋语) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | ChinaThis article is on the geographic and cultural entity. For other meanings, see China (disambiguation). China ( Traditional Chinese: , Simplified Chinese: , Hanyu Pinyin: Zhongguo, Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo) is a country in continental East Asia with some oute |
| Region: | most of Shanxi province; central Inner Mongolia; parts of Hebei, Henan, Shaanxi |
| Total speakers: | 45 million |
| RankingThis page tries to present a list of languages by total native speakers . Note, however, that lists such as this may vary somewhat depending upon the definition given to certain terms. In particular, the exact difference between " dialect" and " language": | 22 [1] |
| GeneticLanguages Most languages are known to belong to language families ("families" hereforth). An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, i. all its members derive from a common ancestor. The ancestor is very seldom known to us directly, since mos classification: | Sino-Tibetan Chinese |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | - |
| Regulated by: | - |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | zh |
| ISO 639-2(B) | chi |
| ISO 639-2(T) | zho |
| SIL | CJY |
The speech of Shanxi province is, alone among the various dialects of North China, unique enough to warrant the label of "language" from some linguists. This may well be due to the geographic isolation of Shanxi. The entire province is a plateau surrounded by mountains on all sides. This may well have contributed to the differences between Jin and all the Mandarin dialects that surround it.