Wu (Chinese: 吴方言; pinyin: Wú fāngyán; Chinese: 吴语; pinyin: Wú yǔ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. It is spoken in most of Zhejiang province, the municipality of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province, as well as smaller parts of Anhui, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces. Major Wu dialects include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Yongkang and Shaoxing. As of 1991, there are 87 million speakers of Wu Chinese, making it the second largest form of Chinese after Mandarin (which has 800 million speakers). This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Zhejiang (also spelled Chehkiang or Chekiang) is an eastern coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Jiangsu (Simplified Chinese: 江苏; Traditional Chinese: 江蘇; Hanyu Pinyin: ; 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. ... Xuancheng is a city with more than 100 000 inhabitants in Eastern Anhui province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... A prefecture-level city (地级市 Pinyin: dìjí shì, literally region-level city) or prefecture-level municipality is an administrative division of the Peoples Republic of China, ranking below a province and above a county in Chinas administrative structure. ... Anhui (Chinese: 安徽; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: An-hui; Postal System Pinyin: Ngan-hui, Anhwei or An-hwei) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... This article is about the Yushan county in the Peoples Republic of China. ... Jiangxi (Chinese: 江西; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chiang-hsi; Postal System Pinyin: Kiangsi) is a southern province of the Peoples Republic of China, spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south. ...   (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Fu-chien; Postal map spelling: Fukien, Foukien; local transliteration Hokkien from Min Nan Hok-kiàn) is one of the provinces on the southeast coast of the Peoples Republic of China. ... North Point (北角; Min Nan: Pak-kak, Jyutping: bak1 gok3; Cantonese IPA: ) is an area of Hong Kong, located in the northern part of Hong Kong Island. ... The factual accuracy of part of this article is disputed. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... Sino-Tibetan languages in red. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Not to be confused with the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ), commonly called Pinyin, is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ), commonly called Pinyin, is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Spoken Chinese The Chinese spoken language(s) comprise(s) many regional variants. ... Chinese (written) language (pinyin: zhōngw n) written in Chinese characters The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; Pinyin: H nyǔ, Hu yǔ, or Zhōngw n) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... Zhejiang (also spelled Chehkiang or Chekiang) is an eastern coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Jiangsu (Simplified Chinese: 江苏; Traditional Chinese: 江蘇; Hanyu Pinyin: ; 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. ... Anhui (Chinese: 安徽; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: An-hui; Postal System Pinyin: Ngan-hui, Anhwei or An-hwei) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Jiangxi (Chinese: 江西; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chiang-hsi; Postal System Pinyin: Kiangsi) is a southern province of the Peoples Republic of China, spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south. ...   (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Fu-chien; Postal map spelling: Fukien, Foukien; local transliteration Hokkien from Min Nan Hok-kiàn) is one of the provinces on the southeast coast of the Peoples Republic of China. ... 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. ... 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. ... Wenzhou dialect (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is a dialect of the Wu language family, which in turn constitutes one of the Sinitic language families. ... The Hangzhou dialect (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is spoken in the city of Hangzhou and its immediate suburbs, but excluding areas further away from Hangzhou such as Xiāoshān è•­å±± Yúháng 余杭. The number of speakers of the Hangzhou dialect has been estimated to be about 1. ... Mandarin (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ; literally speech of officials), or Beifanghua (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; literally Northern Dialect(s)), is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. ...

Among speakers of other Chinese varieties, Wu is often subjectively judged to be soft, light, and flowing. There is even a special term used to describe the quality of Wu speech: 吳儂軟語/吴侬软语 wúnóngruǎnyǔ. The actual source of this impression is harder to place. It is likely a combination of many factors. Among speakers of Wu, for example, Shanghainese is considered softer and mellower than the variant spoken in Ningbo. Some Wu speakers still insist that Suzhou dialect is more pleasant and beautiful than both dialects of Shanghai and Ningbo. Shanghainese (上海言话 [] in Shanghainese), sometimes referred to as the Shanghai dialect, is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. ... Ningbo (Simplified Chinese: 宁波; Traditional Chinese: 寧波; pinyin: Níngbō; Wade-Giles: Ning-po; literally Tranquil Waves) is a seaport sub-provincial city with a population of 800,000 in northeastern Zhejiang province, Peoples Republic of China. ... 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. ...

Like all other varieties of Chinese, there is plenty of dispute as to whether Wu is a language or a dialect. See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for the issues surrounding this dispute. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the languages speakers. ... Chinese forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ...

History

The modern Wu language can be traced back to the ancient Wu and Yue peoples centred around what is now southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang. The Japanese Go-on (呉音) pronunciation of Chinese characters (obtained from the Wu Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period) is from the same region of China where Wu is spoken today. Yue (Traditional Chinese: ; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Yüeh4; also seen as Yueh, Yuet, Việt) refers to ancient semi-Sinicized or non-Sinicized Chinese peoples of southern China, originally those along the eastern coastline of present-day Zhejiang province and Shanghai. ... Go-on (呉音, literally Wu sound）are one of the different readings of a kanji. ... The Kingdom of Wu (Chinese: 吳, pinyin: wú) refers to a nation and several states throughout Chinese history of around the same region in China. ... The Three Kingdoms period (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is a period in the history of China, part of an era of disunity called the Six Dynasties. ...

Nevertheless, modern Wu stems mainly out of Middle Chinese, just like most of other Chinese dialects. Although Wu is the earliest dialect seperating from the Ancient Northern Chinese and thus keeps many accient characteristics, it was being influenced by northern Chinese of different times throughout its development due to the geographical closeness to north China and also to the high rate of education in this region. Latest to Ming Dynasty, the main characteristics of modern Wu have been formed and the Suzhou dialect became a central influential dialect until the modern time.

After the Taipingtianguo-campaign at the end of Qing dynasty, since most of the other Wu speaking regions were largely destroyed by the war, Shanghai, became an important city in this region and immigrants mainly from the Wu speaking regions started their new lives there and largely changed the language of Shanghai thus made it a language island compared to its surburb area. In the first half of the 20th century, before Mandarin was strongly promoted to the Wu speaking region, Shanghainese in a degree played the role as a regional lingua franca.

After the set up of People's Republic of China, especially after the opening up, strong promotion of Mandarin in the Wu Speaking region largely influenced the development of this language. Wu was gradually ruled out of most of the modern media and schools. Public organisations are required to use Mandarin in them. With the inpouring of large amount of non-wu speaking population and the nearly total mandarinisation of public media and organisations as well as the radical mandarin promotion measures, more and more Wu-decent children can not speak Wu anymore, even within their families. Instead, Mandarin becomes their mother tongue.

Many people have noticed this trend and thus call for the protection of this language. More and more TV programs in Wu appear although they are mostly comedies rather than formal programs.

The modern Wu spoken area is roughly a heritage of the See language tree of the Chinese dialects starting from 1500 BC, and Wu's position relative to them. Download high resolution version (612x936, 52 KB)Tree diagram of Chinese languages by Patrick Edwin Moran This drawing is based on my interpretation of information (in Chinese) found at www. ...

Dialects

The Northern Wu dialects are not mutually intelligible with the Southern Wu dialects. Wu is divided into six dialect areas:

• Taihu(太湖片): Spoken over much of southern part of Jiangsu province, including Suzhou ,Wuxi and Changzhou; municipality of Shanghai; and northern part of Zhejiang province, including Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Ningbo, Huzhou, and Jiaxing. This part of Wu is often called Northern Wu dialect and makes up the largest population among all Wu speakers. The subdialects of this region are, in a large degree, mutually intelligible among each other.

• Taizhou(台州片): Spoken in and around Taizhou, Zhejiang province. Taizhou Wu is among the southern dialects the closest to Taihu Wu, also known as North Wu and can in a degree communicate with Taihu Wu. Some experts have categoried it into North Wu.

• Oujiang(甌江片/瓯江片)/Dong'ou(東甌片/东瓯片): Spoken in and around Wenzhou, Zhejiang province. This dialect is the most distinctive and mutually unintelligible among all the Wu dialects. Some dialectologists even treated it as a dialect separate from the rest of Wu dialect.

• Wuzhou(婺州片): Spoken in and around Jinhua, Zhejiang province. Like Taizhou Wu dialect, it is mutually intelligible with Taihu Wu dialect at least in some degree.

• Chu-Qu(處衢片/处衢片): Spoken in and around Lishui and Quzhou in Zhejiang as well as in Shangrao County and Yushan County in Jiangxi province.

• Xuanzhou(宣州片): Spoken in and around Xuancheng, Anhui province. This part of Wu is becoming less spoken since Taipingtianguo campaign and is being slowly replaced by the immigrants' mandarin dialect from the north of Yangtse river.

Jiangsu (Simplified Chinese: 江苏; Traditional Chinese: 江蘇; Hanyu Pinyin: ; 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. ... Suzhou (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; ancient name: 吳) is a city with a long history on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Lake Taihu in the province of Jiangsu, China. ... Wuxi (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; former spellings: Wu-hsi, Wuhsi, or Wusih; lit. ... Changzhou (Chinese: 常州) is a prefecture-level city in the Jiang Nan region of the Jiangsu province of China, population up to 4 million. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Zhejiang (also spelled Chehkiang or Chekiang) is an eastern coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. ...   (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Postal map spelling: Hangchow) is a sub-provincial city in the Peoples Republic of China and the capital of Zhejiang province. ... Shaoxing (Simplified Chinese: 绍兴; Traditional Chinese: 紹興; Pinyin: ShàoxÄ«ng; Wade-Giles: Shao-hsing) is a prefecture-level city in northeastern Zhejiang province, Peoples Republic of China. ... Ningbo (Simplified Chinese: 宁波; Traditional Chinese: 寧波; pinyin: Níngbō; Wade-Giles: Ning-po; literally Tranquil Waves) is a seaport sub-provincial city with a population of 800,000 in northeastern Zhejiang province, Peoples Republic of China. ... Taizhou (Simplified Chinese: 台州; pinyin: Tāizhōu) is a prefecture-level city in the east of Zhejiang province, China. ... Zhejiang (also spelled Chehkiang or Chekiang) is an eastern coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Wenzhou (Simplified Chinese: 温州; Traditional Chinese: 溫州; Hanyu Pinyin: ) is a prefecture-level city with a population of 873,000 in southeastern Zhejiang province, Peoples Republic of China. ... Zhejiang (also spelled Chehkiang or Chekiang) is an eastern coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Jinhua (Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ; lit. ... Zhejiang (also spelled Chehkiang or Chekiang) is an eastern coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Lishui(丽水) is a city located in the southeast of the Peoples Republic of China within the boundaries of Zhejiang Province. ... Quzhou (衢州; pinyin: Qúzhōu) is a prefecture-level city in Zhejiang province, China. ... Zhejiang (also spelled Chehkiang or Chekiang) is an eastern coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... This article is about the Yushan county in the Peoples Republic of China. ... Jiangxi (Chinese: 江西; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chiang-hsi; Postal System Pinyin: Kiangsi) is a southern province of the Peoples Republic of China, spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south. ... Xuancheng is a city with more than 100 000 inhabitants in Eastern Anhui province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Anhui (Chinese: 安徽; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: An-hui; Postal System Pinyin: Ngan-hui, Anhwei or An-hwei) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

Sounds

Wu dialects are notable among Chinese languages in having kept voiced plosives and fricatives from Middle Chinese, such as /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/, etc. The only other major group to have done this is Xiang. Other groups, such as Mandarin and Cantonese, have not kept voiced plosives or fricatives from Middle Chinese. (Min dialects often have voiced plosives, but those are inherited from Middle Chinese nasals rather than unchanged voiced plosives.) Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... Middle Chinese (Traditional Chinese: 中古漢語; Pinyin: zhōnggÇ” HànyÇ”), 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). ... Xiang (湘語/湘语), also Hunan, Hunanese, or Hsiang, is a subdivision of spoken Chinese. ... Min (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; POJ: Bân hong-giân; BUC: Mìng huŏng-ngiòng) is a general term for a group of dialects of the Chinese language spoken in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian as well as by migrants from this province in Guangdong (around Chaozhou-Swatou...

See Suzhou dialect, Hangzhou dialect, and Shanghai dialect for examples of Wu phonology. 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. ... The Hangzhou dialect (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is spoken in the city of Hangzhou and its immediate suburbs, but excluding areas further away from Hangzhou such as Xiāoshān è•­å±± Yúháng 余杭. The number of speakers of the Hangzhou dialect has been estimated to be about 1. ... 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. ...

Grammar

This article or section may be confusing or unclear for some readers. Please improve the article or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since March 2007.

Wu dialects have a relatively higher amount of Subject-Object-Verb sentence structure than Mandarin or Cantonese. There are a huge array of personal and demonstrative pronouns used within the Wu dialects. Sandhi is also extremely complex, and helps parse multisyllabic words and idiomatic phrases. In some cases, indirect objects are distinguished from direct objects by a voiced/voiceless distinction. Image File history File links Circle-question-red. ...

Vocabulary

References

External links

Wu (linguistics) edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1058x1058, 477 KB) aa Wikipedia logo, version 1058px square, no text Wikipedia logo by Nohat (concept by Paullusmagnus); compare Wikipedia File links The following pages link to this file: Arabic language Talk:Anarcho-capitalism Talk:Algorithm Talk:Anno Domini Talk:The... Wikipedia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...

Resources on Wu dialects

• Shanghainese (a Wu Chinese dialect): Introduction and Development - With dictionary, phonology, romanization, audio, comprehensive lessons, readings, and forum. In the works.
• Shanghainese Wu Dictionary - Search in Mandarin, Shanghai, IPA, or English
• Classification of Wu Dialects - By James Campbell
• Tones in Wu Dialects - Compiled by James Campbell
• Wu Chinese Online Association(Simplified Chinese) - Aimed at modernization of Wu Chinese, including basics of Wu, Wu romanization scheme, pronunciation dictionaries of different dialects, Wu input method development, Wu research literatures, written Wu experiment, Wu orthography, a discussion forum and so on.
• The elegant language in Jiangnan area (江南雅音话吴语)(Simplified Chinese) - Basics of Wu Chinese (new and updated).

Articles

• Globalization, National Culture and the Search for Identity: A Chinese Dilemma (1st Quarter of 2006, Media Development) - A comprehensive article, written by Wu Mei and Guo Zhenzhi of World Association for Christian Communication, related to the struggle for national cultural unity by current Chinese Communist national government while desperately fighting for preservation on Chinese regional cultures that have been the precious roots of all Han Chinese people (including Hangzhou Wu dialect). Excellent for anyone doing research on Chinese language linguistic, anthropology on Chinese culture, international business, foreign languages, global studies, and translation/interpretation.
• Modernisation a Threat to Dialects in China - An excellent article originally from Straits Times Interactive through YTL Community website, it provides an insight of Chinese dialects, both major and minor, losing their speakers to Standard Mandarin due to greater mobility and interaction. Excellent for anyone doing research on Chinese language linguistic, anthropology on Chinese culture, international business, foreign languages, global studies, and translation/interpretation.
• Middlebury Expands Study Abroad Horizons - An excellent article including a section on future exchange programs in learning Chinese language in Hangzhou (plus colorful, positive impression on the beautiful Hangzhou dialect, too). (Requires registration of online account before viewing)
• Mind your language (from The Standard, Hong Kong) - This newspaper article provides a deep insight on the danger of decline in the usage of dialects, including Wu dialects, other than the rising star of Standard Mandarin. It also mentions an exception where some grassroots’ organizations and, sometimes, larger institutions, are the force behind the preservation of their dialects. Another excellent article for research on Chinese language linguistic, anthropology on Chinese culture, international business, foreign languages, global studies, and translation/interpretation.
• China: Dialect use on TV worries Beijing (originally from Straits Times Interactive, Singapore and posted on AsiaMedia Media News Daily from UCLA) - Article on the use of dialects other than standard Mandarin in China where strict media censorship is high.
• Standard or Local Chinese - TV Programs in Dialect (from Radio86.co.uk) - Another article on the use of dialects other than standard Mandarin in China.