Sichuanese dialects
Literary and colloquial readings

The existence of literary and colloquial readings (文白异读), is a notable feature in Sichuanese and some other Sinitic varieties, such as Cantonese or Hokkien. In Sichuanese, colloquial readings tend to resemble Ba-Shu Chinese (Old Sichuanese) or Southern Old Mandarin, while literary readings tend to resemble modern standard Mandarin. For example, in the Yaoling dialect (摇铃话), the colloquial reading of " 物 " (means "things") is, which is very similar to its pronunciation of Ba-Shu Chinese in the Song dynasty (960–1279). Meanwhile, its literary reading,, is relatively similar to the standard Mandarin pronunciation. The table below shows some examples of Chinese characters with both literary and colloquial readings in Sichuanese.
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