Wu Chinese

Wu, 吴语, 吳語; pinyin: Wú yǔ, is one of the major languages in China. 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. It is famous among linguists and sinologists as having one of the highest levels of internal diversity among the Chinese dialect families.

Major Wu dialects include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Yongkang, and Quzhou. The prestige dialect has traditionally been that of Suzhou, though due to its large population and economic dominance, Shanghainese is now considered the prestige dialect. Because of the influence of Shanghainese, Wu is often referred to in English as simply "Shanghainese" when introducing the dialect family to non-specialists. Wu is a term used by scholars; other less formal terms include 'Jiangnan speech' (江南話), 'Jiangsu-Zhejiang speech', 'Jiangzhe speech' (江浙話), or less commonly 'Wuyue speech' (吳越語), referring to the kingdom of Wuyue.

Among speakers of other Chinese languages, Wu is often subjectively judged to be soft, light, and flowing. There is even a special term used to describe these qualities of Wu speech (simplified Chinese: 吴侬软语; traditional Chinese: 吳儂軟語; pinyin: wúnóngruǎnyǔ), which literally means "The Tender Language of Wu."

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 goon?) pronunciation of Chinese characters (obtained from the Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period) is from the same region of China where Wu is spoken today. Wu Chinese itself has a 2,600 year old history, dating back to the Spring and Autumn Period.

Origins

Like most other branches of Chinese, Wu descends from Middle Chinese. Although Wu represents one of the earliest splits from the rest of these branches, and thus keeps many ancient characteristics, it was influenced by northern Chinese (Mandarin) throughout its development. This was due to its geographical closeness to North China and also to the high rate of education in this region. During the Wu Hu uprising and the Disaster of Yongjia, the region became heavily inundated by settlers from Northern China, mostly coming from what is now northern Jiangsu province and Shandong province, with smaller numbers of settlers coming from the Central Plains. Subsequently, this gave rise to the ancestral form of modern Wu. During the time between Ming Dynasty and early Republican era, the main characteristics of modern Wu were formed. The Suzhou dialect became the most influential, and many dialectologists use it in citing examples of Wu.

After the Taiping Rebellion at the end of the Qing dynasty, in which the Wu-speaking region was devastated by war, Shanghai was inundated with migrants from other parts of the Wu-speaking area. This greatly affected the dialect of Shanghai, bringing, for example, influence from the Ningbo dialect to a dialect which, at least within the walled city of Shanghai, was almost identical to the Suzhou dialect. As a result of the population boom, in the first half of the 20th century, Shanghainese became almost a regional lingua franca within the region, and eclipsing the status of the Suzhou dialect.

Names

The average speaker of a Wu dialect will generally only refer to their local dialect of Wu and do this by affixing, to the name of their location, the native pronunciation of the word 話 huà, typically pronounced with a /ɦ/ initial and a rounded back vowel taking tone II, tone IIb or whatever tone tone II or IIb has merged with. Affixing 言話 yánhuà is also common and more typical of the Taihu division.

Wu (simplified Chinese: 吴语; traditional Chinese: 吳語; pinyin: Wú yǔ, 'Wu language'): the formal name and standard reference in dialectology literature.

Wu dialects (simplified Chinese: 吴语方言; traditional Chinese: 吳語方言; pinyin: Wú yǔ fāngyán, 'dialects of the Wu language'): another scholastic term.

Shanghainese (simplified Chinese: 上海话/上海言话; traditional Chinese: 上海話/上海言話; pinyin: Shànghǎihuà/Shànghǎiyánhuà): is also a very common name, used because Shanghai is the most well-known city in the Wu-speaking region. The use of the term Shanghainese for referring to the family is more typically used outside of China and in simplified introductions to the areas where it's spoken or to other similar topics, for example one might encounter sentences like "They speak a kind of Shanghainese in Ningbo." The term Shanghainese is never used by serious linguists to refer to anything but the Shanghai dialect.

Wuyue language (simplified Chinese: 吴樾语; traditional Chinese: 吳越語; pinyin: Wúyuèyǔ 'the language of Wu and Yue'): an ancient name, now seldom used, referring to the language(s) spoken in the ancient states of Wu, Yue, and Wuyue or the general region where they were located and by extension the modern forms of the language(s) spoken there. It was also used as an older term for what is now simply known as Wu Chinese. Initially, some dialectologists had grouped the Wu dialects in Jiangsu under the term 吳語 Wúyǔ where the ancient Wu kingdom had been located and the Wu dialects in Zhejiang under the term 越語 Yuèyǔ where the ancient Yue kingdom had been located. Today, most dialectologists consider the Wu dialects in northern Zhejiang far more similar to those of southern Jiangsu than to those of southern Zhejiang, so this terminology is no longer appropriate from a linguistic perspective. As a result, the following two terms have have become more and more common in dialectology literature to differentiate between those in Jiangsu and the northern half of Zhejiang and those in southern Zhejiang and its Wu periphery.

Northern Wu (simplified Chinese: 北部吴语; traditional Chinese: 北部吳語; pinyin: Běibù Wúyǔ): Wu spoken in the north of Zhejiang, Shanghai, and parts of Anhui and Jiangsu, comprising the Taihu and Taizhou divisions.

Southern Wu (simplified Chinese: 南部吴语; traditional Chinese: 南部吳語; pinyin: Nánbù Wúyǔ): Wu spoken in southern Zhejiang and periphery, comprising the Oujiang, Wuzhou, and Chuqu divisions.

Western Wu (simplified Chinese: 西部吴语; traditional Chinese: 西部吳語; pinyin: Xībù Wúyǔ): Wu spoken in southern Anhui, Southeast Jiangsu and Northeast Zhejiang, comprising the Tongjing, Taigao, and Shiling Xuanzhou subdivisions.

Jiangnan language (simplified Chinese: 江南话; traditional Chinese: 江南話; pinyin: Jiāngnánhuà): meaning the language of the area south of the Yangtze, used because most of the Wu speakers live south of the Yangtze River called Jiangnan.

Kiang-Che or Jiangzhe language (simplified Chinese: 江浙话; traditional Chinese: 江浙話; pinyin: Jiāngzhéhuà): meaning "the speech of Jiangsu and Zhejiang".

Varieties

Wu is divided into two major groups: Northern Wu and Southern Wu, which are only partially mutually intelligible. Individual words spoken in isolation may be comprehensible among these speakers, but the flowing discourse of everyday life mostly is not. There is another lesser group Western Wu, synonymous with the Xuanzhou division, which has a larger influence from the surrounding Mandarin dialects than Northern Wu, making it typologically much different from the rest of Wu. The following are the traditional classifications of Wu, but one of China's foremost dialectologists Cao Zhiyun (Chinese: 曹志耘; pinyin: Cáo Zhìyún) has rearranged some of the divisions based on the greater corpus of data available now compared to when these divisions were made.

According to Yan (2006), Wu is divided into six dialect areas:

Taihu (i.e., Lake Tai region): Spoken over much of southern part of Jiangsu province, including Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, the southern part of Nantong, Jingjiang and Danyang; the municipality of Shanghai; and the northern part of Zhejiang province, including Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Ningbo, Huzhou, and Jiaxing. This group makes up the largest population among all Wu speakers. The subdialects of this region are, in a large degree, mutually intelligible among each other.

Shanghainese

Suzhou dialect

Hangzhou dialect

Ningbo dialect

Wuxi dialect

Changzhou dialect

Jiangyin dialect

Qihai dialect

Jinxiang dialect