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'Sichuan language (四川话), Szechwanese (Wade-Giles) or Sichuanese (pinyin: ''sì chuān huà'')' means a language belonging to the southwest Mandarin group, spoken in Sichuan, China, and sometimes it means all languages spoken in Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality. It is spoken by about 120 million people. If Sichuanese were counted as a separate language, it would be the 10th largest language by number of speakers, just behind Japanese. Like all the other Chinese dialects, the Sichuan dialect has some special words and characters which can not be written down in Chinese. The dialect is recognizeable because of its different tonal characteristics, nasalization, and clipped vowels. Like many Chinese dialects, all the "ch", "sh", "zh" sounds in hanyu pinyin Mandarin are transformed into "c", "s", "z" in Sichuan dialect. To distinguish the different accents inside Sichuan dialect, special attention needs to be paid to certain pronunciation variants. Take the Chengdu and Chongqing accents as an example. People from Chengdu will pronounce "an" flatly while Chongqing people will pronounce it with slightly more nasal "ang" sound. It is widely remarked in Sichuan-Chongqing that the Chengdu accent is "softer", and the Chongqing one is "harder", even going so far to say that the Chengdu accent suits women while the Chongqing one suits men.
Although Sichuan province is in southwestern China, Sichuan dialect shares so many similarities with Mandarin (a northeast language) that many linguists consider it a dialect rather than a separate language. So it is not difficult for someone who knows Mandarin to understand what a Sichuanese might be saying. Generally speaking, Sichuanese people can also communicate with others from parts of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi provinces without much trouble, without resorting to putonghua as many of their dialects are mutually intelligible.