The Subgrouping of the Lishui Dialect

The material

The subgrouping of the Lishui dialect is described in two different ways in the material held by this site. Both accounts are taken from the same encyclopaedia-type page; no dialect gazetteer, no dialect chapter of a county gazetteer and no dialect survey has been verified here. The two accounts are set out side by side, without a conclusion being drawn.

Account one: the Wu language, Xuanzhou group

A Baike.com entry on Lishui speech holds that it belongs to the Wu language, Xuanzhou group:

属吴语—宣州片

Translated: It belongs to the Wu language, Xuanzhou group.

The same page says that most of the area belongs to the Wu-speaking region while a few towns in the north belong to the Nanjing Mandarin region:

大部分地区属吴语区，北边少数城镇属南京官话区

Translated: Most of the area belongs to the Wu-speaking region; a few towns in the north belong to the Nanjing Mandarin region.

It further describes the county seat as lying in a belt of mixed Wu and Huai speech:

吴淮混杂地带

Translated: A belt of mixed Wu and Huai speech.

The phrases quoted above are the page's own wording and are reproduced without alteration.

Account two: Jianghuai Mandarin, Hongchao subgroup

A different account places northern Lishui in the Jianghuai Mandarin, Hongchao subgroup, Nanjing sub-group, that is, it assigns the north to Jianghuai Mandarin rather than to Wu:

溧水北部属江淮官话洪巢片南京小片

Translated: Northern Lishui belongs to the Jianghuai Mandarin, Hongchao subgroup, Nanjing sub-group.

This account conflicts with the Wu-language account given above, and is recorded in the source material held by this site as a statement in conflict with that page.

Uncertainties

First, the two accounts reach opposite conclusions about northern Lishui and the county seat: one assigns them to the Wu-speaking region, the other to Jianghuai Mandarin. No authoritative dialect gazetteer or dialect survey is held by this site, so the two are set side by side and neither is preferred.

Second, both accounts are taken from an encyclopaedia-type page rather than from a dialect gazetteer, a dialect chapter of a county gazetteer, or a dialect survey; the confidence for this entry is therefore set at low.

Third, neither account gives the phonological or lexical criteria on which the division rests, nor the survey points used, and none are supplied here.