Wú () is one of the major
divisions of the
Chinese languages. 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,
Shaoxing,
Jinhua,
Yongkang, and
Quzhou. The traditional
prestige dialect of Wu is the
Suzhou dialect, though due to its large population,
Shanghainese is today sometimes considered the prestige dialect.
As of 1991, there are at least 77 million speakers of Wu Chinese, which makes it the 10th most populous language in the world.
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 (). 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, although some Wu speakers still insist that old standard
Suzhou dialect is more pleasant and beautiful than the dialects of Shanghai and Ningbo.
Like other varieties of
Chinese, there is debate as to whether Wu is a
language or a
dialect. See
Varieties of Chinese for the issues surrounding this dispute. By the standard of
mutual intelligibility, spoken Wu is a separate language from Mandarin. There is a great but not complete degree of mutual intelligibility between
written Wu and Mandarin within the
People's Republic of China as both are written in the current
Vernacular Chinese, which uses
Simplified Chinese characters as well as grammar and vocabulary centred on
Standard Mandarin with a few allowances for "regional variation".
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 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.
The area coloured in grim green shows the Wu-speaking region in Greater China.
Origins
Like most other branches of Chinese, Wu descends from
Middle Chinese. Although Wu represents the earliest split 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 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, to some extent eclipsing the status of the Suzhou dialect.
Post-1949
After the founding of the
People's Republic of China, the strong promotion of
Mandarin in the Wu-speaking region influenced the development of the language. Wu was gradually excluded from most modern media and schools. Public organisations were required to use Mandarin. With the influx of a migrant non Wu-speaking population and the near total conversion of public media and organizations to the exclusive use of Mandarin, as well as the radical Mandarin promotion measures, the development of the Wu dialects was greatly hampered. It became common in the region to encounter children who grew up with Mandarin as their mother tongue, with little or no fluency in Wu at all.
Many people have noticed this trend and thus call for the protection of this language. More and more TV programs are appearing in Wu, although they are mostly comedies rather than formal programs.
Roughly speaking, modern Wu is a leftover of the Chinese dialects –
see language tree starting from 1500 BC with Wu's position relative to other dialects.
Dialects
A map of the main groups of Wu Dialects in China. See also map at
and pie chart at
Many Wu dialects are diverse and not mutually intelligible with each other. However, all Wu dialects including Oujiang can understand the Taihu dialect, while Taihu speakers find the other dialects unintelligible or intelligible only to a small extent.
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.
- Taizhou (): 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 communicate with speakers of Taihu Wu.
- Oujiang (/)/Dong'ou (/): 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 (): Spoken in and around Jinhua, Zhejiang province. Like Taizhou Wu dialect, it is mutually intelligible with Taihu Wu dialect at least to some degree.
- Xuanzhou (): Spoken in and around Xuancheng, Anhui province. This part of Wu is becoming less spoken since the campaign started by Taiping Rebellion and is being slowly replaced by the immigrants' mandarin dialect from the north of Yangtse river.
Phonology
According to Yan (2006), the Wu dialects are notable among Chinese languages in having kept the "muddy" (
voiced, or more precisely
slack voiced)
plosives and
fricatives of
Middle Chinese, such as
etc., thus maintaining the three-way contrast of Middle Chinese
stop consonants and
affricates, , ,
etc. Because Wu dialects never lost these voiced obstruents, the tone split of Middle Chinese is still allophonic, and most dialects have three syllabic tones (though counted as eight in traditional descriptions). In Shanghai, these are reduced to two
word tones.
See
Suzhou dialect,
Hangzhou dialect,
Changzhou dialect,
Shanghainese,
Quzhou dialect,
Jiangshan dialect and
Wenzhou Chinese for examples of Wu phonology.
Wu Chinese has preserved the three-way contrast system. For example:
「凍」、「痛」、「洞」 - [t]、[tʰ]、[d]
Where as in Mandarin, the initial of 「洞」 has changed to [t].
Literary and Vernacular pronunciations in Shanghai dialect「家」 (house) [ʨia52]L/[ka52]V
「顏」 (face) [ɦiɪ113]L/[ŋʱɛ113]V
「櫻」 (cherry) [ʔiŋ52]L/[ʔã52]V
「孝」 (filial piety) [ɕiɔ335]L/[hɔ335]V
「學」[ʱjaʔ2]L/[ʱoʔ2]V
「物」[vəʔ2]L/[mʱəʔ2]V
「網」 (web) [ʱwɑŋ113]L/[mʱɑŋ113]V
「鳳」 (male phoenix) [voŋ113]L/[boŋ113]V
「肥」 (fat) [vi113]L/[bi113]V
「日」 (sun) [zəʔ2]L/[ɳʱiɪʔ2]V
「人」 (person) [zən113]L/[ɳʱin113]V
「鳥」 (bird) [ʔɳiɔ335]L/[tiɔ335]V
Grammar
The Wu
pronoun system is complex when it comes to personal and demonstrative pronouns. For example, the first person plural pronoun differs when it is inclusive (including the hearer) and when it is exclusive (excluding the hearer, such as "me and him/her/them not you"). Wu employs six demonstratives, three of which are used to refer to close objects, and three of which are used for farther objects.
In terms of
word order, Wu uses SVO (like
Mandarin), but unlike Mandarin, it also has a high occurrence of SOV and in some cases OSV
In terms of phonology, tone
sandhi is 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.
In most cases,
classifiers take the place of genitive particles and articles, such as the Wu Chinese examples below:
*本書交關好看。 *我支筆 *渠碗粥
These examples in Wu Chinese are the equivalents of 書很好看, 我的筆, and 他的粥 in Mandarin Chinese.
The respective glosses in English are roughly:
volume (this) book rather than this book,
my stick of pen rather than my pen, and
his bowl of congee rather than his congee.
Examples
* 你 我 個 朋友 啘。
ni ŋu kəʔ põjɤ ue.
Literal meaning:(2nd person singular) (1st person singular) (genitive) (friend) (particle)
Meaning: You are my friend. Compare with Japanese: "あなたは私の友達だよ.", or "anata wa watashi no tomodachi dayo"。In this case, "啘", resembles Japanese "だよ".
* 渠(其) 你 老師 啘，要 尊重 人家。
gi ɳi lɔsʐ ue, iɔ tseɳd͡ʒõ ninkɒ.
Literal meaning:(3rd person singular) (2nd person singular) (teacher) (particle), (have) (respect) (other)
Meaning: He is your teacher, and you have to respect him.
* 鉛筆 借 我 支 好伐?
kæpiɘʔ t͡ʃiɒ t͡sʐ ŋu xɔfɐ̞ʔ?
Literal meaning: (pencil) (borrow) (1st person singular) (measure word for pencil)(interrogative)
Meaning: Can I borrow a pencil?
* 飯 再 喫 碗 添，多 吃 些兒 啊。
væ t͡se t͡ɕʰiɘʔ uə tʰie, tu t͡ɕʰiɘʔ ʃin o.
Literal meaning: (rice/meal) (again) (eat) (bowl) (particle?), (more) (eat) (more+) (particle)
Meaning: If you want to eat more, then eat more if you'd like.
* 感冒藥 喫嘞 朆 你，覅 記弗着 掉 唻!
kəmɔjɐ̞ʔ t͡ɕʰiɘʔləʔ vən ɳi, fiɔ t͡ɕʰifəʔt͡ʃɐ̞ʔ tɔ le.
Literal meaning: (cold medicine) (taking/eating) (interrogative) (2nd person singular), (negative) (verb-remember/negative) (particle) (imperative)
Meaning: Have you taken your cold medicine yet? Don't forget to take it!
* 其 勒 門口頭 立 勒許。
[ɦi le məŋ.kʰɤɯ.dɤɯ lɪʔ lɐˑ.he]
He was standing at the door.
Gloss: Third-person (past participle) doorway(particle) stand (existed)
Vocabulary
Like other varieties of Southern Chinese, Wu Chinese retains some archaic vocabulary from
Classical Chinese,
Middle Chinese, and
Old Chinese.
ExamplesMandarin equivalents and their pronunciation on Wu Chinese are in parentheses. All IPA pronunciations and examples listed below are from
Shanghainese.
「許」（那） [he] (na) (particle)
「汏」（洗） [da] (si) to wash
「囥」（藏） [kɔŋ] (zɔŋ) to hide something
「隑」（斜靠） [ge] (ʑ̊ia kʰɔ) to lean
「廿」（二十） [ne] (əl sɐʔ) twenty (The Mandarin equivalent, 二十, is also used to a lesser extent, mostly in its literary pronunciation.)
「弗」/「勿」（不） [və] (pʰə) no, not
「立」(站) [liɪʔ] (ze) to stand
「囝」/「囡」 [nø] child, whelp (In Mandarin, this word is pronounced as jiǎn. 囡 is pronounced the same way, and is the female equivalent of 囝. It is pronunced as nān in Mandarin.)
「睏」(睡) [kʰwəŋ] (zø) to sleep
「尋」(找) [ʑ̊iɲ] (tsɔ) to find
「戇」 [gɔɲ] foolish, stupid. (It is a cognate of the Min word 歞, which is
ngâung [ŋɑuŋ˨˦˨] in
Fuzhou dialect and
gōng [koŋ˧] in
Min Nan.)
Preference of archaic wordsLike other varieties of Southern Chinese, Wu prefers more archaic words to 'to speak'. For example:
In most Wu dialects, with the exception of Hangzhou dialect, 講 [gɔŋ] is preferred when referring to speaking rather than the Mandarin shuō 說 [sɐʔ].
In Guangfeng and Yushan counties of Jiangxi province, 曰[je] is generally preferred over 說.
In Shangrao county of Jiangxi province, 話[wa] is preferred over 說.
ColloquialismsIn Wu Chinese, there are colloquialisms that are traced back to ancestral Chinese varieties, such as Middle or Old Chinese. Many of those colloquialisms are cognates of other words found in other modern southern Chinese dialects, such as
Gan,
Xiang, or
Min.
Mandarin equivalents and their pronunciation on Wu Chinese are in parentheses. All IPA pronunciations and examples listed below are from
Shanghainese.
「鑊子」 （鍋子） [ɦɔ zɨ] (gu zɨ)
wok, cooking pot. The Mandarin equivalent term is also used, but both of them are synonyms and are thus interchangeable.
「結棍」(厲害) [tɕiɪʔ kuɛɲ] (li ɦe) formidable. It literally means to gather and bundle up sticks.
「戇大」 [gɔɲ d̥u] idiot, fool
「衣裳」 (衣服) [i z̥ã] (i v̥oʔ) clothing. Found in other Chinese dialects. It is a reference to traditional
Han Chinese clothing, where it consists of the upper garments 「衣」 and the lower garments 「裳」.
See also
