Taihu Wu

Wu Chinese language

Taihu Wu
吳語太湖片
Native to	People's Republic of China
Region	South Jiangsu province, North Zhejiang province, southeastern Anhui, and Shanghai. Linguistic exclave in Cangnan county in southern Zhejiang province.
Native speakers	(47 million cited 1987)^[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Wu Taihu Wu
Writing system	Chinese characters
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (`mis`)
ISO 639-6	`taiu tupn`
Glottolog	`taih1244`
Linguasphere	`79-AAA-db`

Taihu Wu (吳語太湖片) or Northern Wu (北部吳語) is a Wu Chinese language spoken in much of the southern part of the province of Jiangsu, 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. A notable exception is the dialect of the town of Jinxiang, which is a linguistic exclave of Taihu Wu in Zhenan Min-speaking Cangnan county of Wenzhou prefecture in Zhejiang province. Speakers in regions around Taihu Lake and Hangzhou Bay, are the largest population among all Wu speakers. Taihu Wu dialects such as Shanghainese, Shaoxing and Ningbo are mutually intelligible even for L2 Taihu speakers.

History

Linguistic affinity has also been used as a tool for regional identity and politics in the Jiangbei and Jiangnan regions. While the city of Yangzhou was the center of trade, flourishing and prosperous, it was considered part of Jiangnan, which was known to be wealthy, even though Yangzhou was north of the Yangzi River. Once Yangzhou's wealth and prosperity were gone, it was then considered to be part of Jiangbei, the "backwater".

After Yangzhou was removed from Jiangnan, many of its residents switched from Jianghuai Mandarin, the dialect of Yangzhou, to Taihu Wu dialects. In Jiangnan itself, multiple subdialects of Wu competed for the position of prestige dialect.^[2]

In 1984, around 85 million speakers are mutually intelligible with Shanghainese.^[3]

Phonology

Taihu Wu varieties tend to preserve historical voiced initials.^[4] The number of phonemic vowels can reach numbers higher than that of some Germanic languages.^[5] Taihu Wu varieties typically have phonemic 7-8 tones,^[6] though some can go as high as 12 or as low as 5,^[7]^[8] and they all have highly complex tone sandhi.^[9]

List of Taihu Wu dialect subgroups

Su–Jia–Hu (Suzhou–Jiaxing–Huzhou, 蘇嘉湖小片), also known as Su–Hu–Jia (Suzhou–Shanghai–Jiaxing, 蘇滬嘉小片) – 23 million speakers in 1987^[1]
- Suzhou dialect (Jiangsu)
- Shanghainese
- Jiaxing dialect (Zhejiang)
- Wuxi dialect (Jiangsu)
Tiaoxi (苕溪小片, now considered to be a subbranch or sister group to Suzhou–Shanghai–Jiaxing) – 3 million speakers in 1987^[1]
- Huzhou dialect (Zhejiang)
- Southeast Guangde dialect (Anhui)

Northwestern Wu

Piling (毗陵小片, spoken in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces) – 8 million speakers in 1987^[1]
- Changzhou dialect (Jiangsu)
Hangzhou (杭州小片) – 1.2 million speakers in 1987^[1]
- Hangzhou dialect (Zhejiang)

Northern Zhejiang

Lin–Shao (臨紹小片) – 7.8 million speakers in 1987^[1]
- Shaoxing dialect (Zhejiang)
- Lin'an (Zhejiang)
Yongjiang 甬江小片 or Mingzhou (明州小片) – 4 million speakers in 1987^[1]
- Ningbo dialect (Zhejiang)
- Zhoushan (Zhejiang)
Jinxiang dialect (金鄉話, appears to be an isolate, but closely related to the Taihu Wu varieties of Northern Zhejiang.)

List of Taihu Wu dialects

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Sinolect.org. "Untitled" (Pie Chart) (in Chinese). Archived from the original (GIF) on 2013-05-13.
^ Ko, Dorothy (1994). Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China (illustrated, annotated ed.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 21. ISBN 0-8047-2359-1. jianghuai mandarin.
^ DeFrancis, John (1984). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
^ VanNess Simmons, Richard (1999), Chinese Dialect Classification: A comparative approach to Harngjou, Old Jintarn and Common Northern Wu, John Benjamins Publishing Co., p. 3-7, ISBN 90-272-3694-1
^ Li, Hui; Hong, Yulong (2012), 偒傣話：世界上元音最多的語言 [Dondac: The language with the most vowels in the world], Fudan University Press, p. 12, ISBN 978-7-309-09153-3
^ Chappell, Hilary; Lan, Li (2017), "Mandarin and other Sinitic languages", Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese language, Oxford: Taylor & Francis, p. 605-628
^ Xu, Zhen (2009), 吴江方言声调研究 [A Study on the Tones of the lect of Wujiang] (thesis), Shanghai Normal University, p. 9
^ Qian, Nairong; Xu, Baohua; Tang, Zhenzhu (2007), 上海话大词典 [The Great Dictionary of Shanghainese] (1 ed.), Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House, p. 386, ISBN 978-7-5326-2248-1
^ Rose, Phil; Toda, Takako (1994), "A Typology of Tone Sandhi Rules in Northern Wu", Current Issues in Sino-Tibetan Linguistics, Ōsaka: 267–273

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Taizhou Wu	Taizhou Tiantai
Oujiang	Wenzhou Rui'an Wencheng
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