Hike 訮家 -- Sinitic con-topolect

[dva_arla]

Hike 訮家 is a Sinitic language (or clade) currently spoken by ca. 850,000 Zoroastrians and Manichaeans in Central China.

It is an offshoot of the Middle Chinese of the Qieyun, but has undergone several sound changes which rends it distinct from other Sinitic languages:

- Aspirated stops turn into fricatives, while voiced stops retain their voicing. This deprives Hike of the aspiration distinction made in virtually all of the other Sinitic languages, though voiceless consonants are allophonically aspirated in some occasions.

pʰ > f : 炮 pʰˠauH > /feò/ > fiò
tʰ > θ > ɬ > l or s (dialectal split) : 天 tʰen > li or si
kʰ > x : 筷兒 kʰuaiH + -ȵiᴇ > /xoèʒ/ > huèz

- Nasals are denasalised into voiced fricatives when not followed by a nasal coda. This is a retention of a feature that was once prevalent over a much wider area, including the prestige variety of the Tang Empire, viz. the Chang'an variety. In OTL retained only in Min varieties and Sino-Japanese borrowings.

m > β > v : 馬 maX > vè
n > ð > l
ŋ > ɣ > g :
ɲ > ʒ : 爾 ȵiᴇX ( +t of obscure origins) > /ʒìɹ/ > jà (but 年 nen > ni)
ɳ > dʒ :

- A distinction is occasionally maintained between Div. III and IV rhymes. Division III rhymes are those reconstructed with an initial glide (/ie/, /iɐ/, etc.) while Div. IV are those that do not (/e/).

先 sen (Div. III) > sinj > si
仙 sien (Div. IV) > seinj > sai

- Palatal sibilants and affricates merge with their dental counterparts, while the retroflexes remain distinct.
心 sim > /səv/ > sov
書 ɕɨʌ > so
生 ʃæŋ > she

- The chain-shift ɛ > ɑ > ɔ, occurring in the development of many non-Min varieties, did not spread to Hike.

寒 ɦɑn > /ɣɑn/ > /gou/ > gu
山 ʃɛn > she

- Tones: 上 merges with 平 , but rhymes in 上 with voiced stop initials merge into 去 and 入 instead -- a feature shared by the 'northern' Sinitic languages from Mandarin to Hakka. 入 merges with 去 -- the resulting tone is marked in transliteration with an accent grave.

- Codas
Initial changes:

-n -ŋ > -N (nasalisation)
-m -p > -̃β β > -β > -v
-t > -ɹ > -ɚ
-k > -ʁ or -β > ø or -v

All of the codas save -v and -j are eventually elided, though not without impacting, at times drastically, the quality of the preceding vowel. More on this later.

[Iyionaku]

If the language is spoken in Central China, why would it use traditional characters instead of simplified ones? Is there a big diaspora?

[dva_arla]

If the language is spoken in Central China, why would it use traditional characters instead of simplified ones? Is there a big diaspora?

Because it facilitates searches into Wiktionary, which heads entries using the traditional characters by default.

Wikipedia seems to prefer traditional characters in articles on Sinitic languages, regardless of where and when the latter is spoken.