Chongyang is located at the junction of Xiang dialect, Gan dialect and northern dialect, and it is also a region with frequent population migration in history. The composition of Chongyang dialect is ancient and complex, which has caused serious obstacles for people who speak Chongyang dialect to communicate with foreigners.
Because of this, Chongyang dialect has long been valued by linguists at home and abroad, and it is called "the living fossil of studying ancient culture and history".
According to historical records, during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, southeastern Hubei was the border of Chu, bordering the eastern State of Yue. Although it is in the territory of Chu, it is not Chu dialect (the predecessor of modern Xiang dialect). As early as the Tang Dynasty, people had noticed that Chu dialect was not popular in the east of the middle part of Jianghan Plain, and was mistakenly called "Wu dialect". In the Northern Song Dynasty, Zhang Lei wrote in A Journey to Qi 'an: "Huangzhou Chu is divided into three households, and the lattice is full of towers. ... at dusk, foreigners come to Hunan. " "Huxiang" here refers to the south bank of the Yangtze River near Huangzhou, which is the southeast of Hubei. In the Ming Dynasty, Yuan Hongdao also said in Jinniu Town that "the village girl speaks pretty". "Yi Yan" and "Man" both refer to Gan dialect which is different from the Mandarin system at that time.
However, Tongcheng dialect has many special Chu words because it is close to the birthplace of the ancient Chu language and borders the Xiang language area. Such as "Zhou (suffer indignities)" (ancient Chu dialect), "Tang Ke (wife)" (Xiang dialect), "Ya (child)" (Xiang dialect), "Zi (son)" (Xiang dialect) and "Ya (old woman)" (Xiang dialect
Although Gan dialect is a highly interoperable language in southern Chinese, it is still difficult to communicate with local languages because of the special language intersection characteristics here. Take the languages in southeastern Hubei as an example. Except for the obvious common pronunciation of Putonghua (now Chibi), other languages can hardly communicate with each other.
Due to the geographical location of Chongyang and the influence of ancient population migration, Chongyang dialect retains some features of ancient Chinese, such as "brother and sister" in Chongyang dialect, and "sister" was an existing title during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. There are many such examples. Some ancient Chinese features of Chongyang dialect are of great help to the study of ancient poetry today. For example, "Xie" and "Jia" in Mandarin don't rhyme, but the vowel "A" of "Xie" and "Jia" in Chongyang dialect is the same. Chongyang dialect retains some characteristics of ancient Chinese, which is closer to the language of Chu State in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. Compared with other languages, Chongyang dialect is difficult to discuss further because of its small number of speakers and different language characteristics from other nearby areas. However, with more and more scholars studying local dialects, I believe that the mystery of Chongyang dialect will eventually be revealed.