Suzhou dialect (蘇州話 / 苏州话; pinyin: sū zhōu huà) is a dialect of Wu, one of the subdivisions of Chinese spoken language. It is spoken in the city of Suzhou, in Jiangsu province of China. Pinyin (拼音, pīnyīn) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonetic notation and transliteration to roman script) for Standard Mandarin used in the... Wu (吳方言 pinyin wú fāng yán; 吳語 pinyin wú yǔ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. ... Spoken Chinese The Chinese spoken language(s) comprise(s) many regional variants. ... Suzhou (Simplified Chinese: 苏州; Traditional Chinese: 蘇州; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Su-chou; sometimes seen transliterated as Su-chow, Suchow, or Soochow) is one of the most famous cities in China. ... Jiangsu (Simplified Chinese: 江苏; Traditional Chinese: 江蘇; pinyin: Jiāngsū; Wade-Giles: Chiang-su; Postal System Pinyin: Kiangsu) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. ...

It is typical of the Wu dialects, being rich in vowels and conservative in having many initials, and has many similarities with the Shanghai dialect. Shanghainese (上海話; pinyin: Shànghǎihuà, Shanghainese in SAMPA: [ zA~ hE hE wo ]) is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. ...

Phonology

Initials

Suzhou dialect has a set of voiced initials and exhibits unvoiced unaspirated and aspirated stops, there are unvoiced and voiced fricatives sets. Moreover, palatized initials also feature.

Rimes

Suzhou has one tripthong rime, [ iøʏ ]. Unlike Shanghai, it has no nasalised rimes, although it does have a set of rimes which end in a nasal stop. Middle Chinese ru tone characters which end in [ -p -t -k ] end as a glottal stop [ - ʔ ] in Suzhou. Middle Chinese nasal endings [ -m ] have merged with rimes which end with [ -n ] in Suzhou. Middle Chinese [ - ŋ ] ending rimes have split into two types in Suzhou. Those which have a high fronted main vowel merge with [ -n ] ending rimes. Those which possess a palatising medial [ -i- ] and back main vowel, retain the [ - ŋ ] ending. Middle Chinese (中古漢語, pinyin: zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ), or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (6th century - 10th century). ...

Tones

In Suzhou, part of the Middle Chinese Shang tone characters has merged with the modern yin qu tone.

Romanization

See also

• List of Chinese dialects