Wu Chinese

Wu
吳語/吴语
Hhu22 nyy44

Wu (Wú Yǔ) written in Chinese characters
Native to China; Overseas Chinese communities from Wu-speaking regions
Region East China (Shanghai, Zhejiang, southern Jiangsu, parts of Anhui and Jiangxi provinces)
Ethnicity Wu (Han Chinese)
Native speakers
 80 million (2007)[1]
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3 wuu
Glottolog wuch1236[2]
Wu Chinese
Simplified Chinese 吴语
Traditional Chinese 吳語

Wu (Chinese characters: 吳語 , nguphin: ngu niu, Suzhou dialect: IPA: [ɦəu²² ɲy⁴⁴], Shanghai dialect: IPA: [ɦu²² ɲy⁴⁴] Wuxi dialect: IPA: [ŋu21 nʲy232]) is a group of linguistically similar and historically related varieties of Chinese primarily spoken in Zhejiang province, the municipality of Shanghai, and southern Jiangsu province.

Major Wu dialects include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Wenzhou, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, and Yongkang. Wu speakers, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Lu Xun, and Cai Yuanpei, occupied positions of great importance in modern Chinese culture and politics. Wu can also be found being used in Shaoxing opera, which is second only in national popularity to Peking opera; as well as in the performances of the popular entertainer and comedian Zhou Libo. Wu is also spoken in a large number of diaspora communities, with significant centers of immigration originating from Qingtian and Wenzhou.

Suzhou has traditionally been the linguistic center of the Wu dialects and was likely the first place the distinct variety of Sinitic known as Wu developed. Suzhou Wu is widely considered to be the most linguistically representative of the family. It was mostly the basis of the Wu lingua franca that developed in Shanghai leading to the formation of modern Shanghainese, which as a center of economic power and possessing the largest population of Wu speakers, has attracted the most attention. Due to the influence of Shanghainese, Wu as a whole is incorrectly labelled in English as simply, "Shanghainese", when introducing the dialect family to non-specialists. Wu is the more accurate terminology for the greater grouping that the Shanghai dialect is part of; other less precise terms include "Jiangnan speech" (江南話), "Jiangzhe (Jiangsu–Zhejiang) speech" (江浙話), and less commonly "Wuyue speech" (吳越語).

This dialect group (Southern Wu in particular) is well-known among linguists and sinologists as being one of the most internally diverse among the Sinitic language groups, with very little mutual intelligibility among varieties within the dialect clusters. Among speakers of other Sinitic languages, Wu is often subjectively judged to be soft, light, and flowing. There is an idiom in Mandarin that specifically describes these qualities of Wu speech: Ngu nung nioe niu (吴侬软语), which literally means "the tender speech of Wu". On the other hand, some Wu varieties like Wenzhounese have gained notoriety for their incomprehensibility to both Wu and non-Wu speakers alike, so much so that Wenzhounese was used during the Second World War to avoid Japanese interception.

Wu dialects have the largest vowel quality inventories in the world. The Jinhui dialect spoken in Shanghai's Fengxian District has 20 vowel qualities, the most among all world languages.[3][4]

Wu dialects are typified linguistically as having preserved the voiced initials of Middle Chinese, having a majority of Middle Chinese tones undergo a register split, and preserving a checked tone typically terminating in a glottal stop,[5] although some dialects maintain the tone without the stop and certain dialects of Southern Wu have undergone or are starting to undergo a process of devoicing. The historical relations which determine Wu classification primarily consist in two main factors: firstly, geography, both in terms of physical geography and distance south or away from Mandarin, that is, Wu dialects are part of a Wu–Min dialect continuum from southern Jiangsu to southern Hujian and Chaozhou. The second factor is the drawing of historical administrative boundaries, which, in addition to physical barriers, limit mobility and in the majority of cases more or less determine the boundary of a Wu dialect.

Wu Chinese, along with Min, is also of great significance to historical linguists due to their retention of many ancient features. These two languages have proven pivotal in determining the phonetic history of the Sinitic languages.

More pressing concerns of the present are those of language preservation. Many within and outside of China fear that the increased usage of Mandarin may eventually altogether supplant the languages that have no written form, legal protection, or official status and are officially barred from use in public discourse. However, many analysts believe that a stable state of diglossia will endure for at least several generations if not indefinitely.

Geographic distribution

Wu varieties are spoken in most of Zhejiang province, the municipality of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province, as well as smaller parts of Anhui, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces.[6] Many are located in the lower Yangzi valley.[7][8]

Names

Speakers of Wu dialects are mostly unaware of this term for their speech since the term "Wu" is a relatively recent classificatory imposition on what are less clearly defined and highly heterogeneous natural forms. Saying one speaks Wu is akin to saying one speaks a Germanic language. It is not a particularly defined entity like Standard Mandarin or Hochdeutsch.

Most speakers are only vaguely aware of their local variety's affinities with other similarly classified dialects and will generally only refer to their local Wu variety rather than the dialect family. They do this by affixing '話' Wo (speech) to their location's endonym. For example, 溫州話 Wēnzhōuhuà is used for Wenzhounese. Affixing 閒話 xiánhuà is also common and more typical of the Taihu division, as in 嘉興閒話 Kashin'ghenwo for Jiaxing dialect.

History

An example of the Wuxi dialect of Wu

Modern Wu can be traced back to the ancient Wu and Yue centered around what is now southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang. The Japanese Go-on (呉音 goon, pinyin: Wú yīn) readings of Chinese characters (obtained from the Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period) are from the same region of China where Wu is spoken today, however the readings do not necessarily reflect the pronunciation of Wu Chinese. Wu Chinese itself has a history of more than 2,500 years, dating back to the Chinese settlement of the region in the Spring and Autumn Period, however there are only very minor traces from these earlier periods. The language of today is wholly descendant from the Middle Chinese of the Sui–Tang era (6–8th centuries), as is true of all contemporary Chinese dialects except Min Chinese.[10]

Historic range

According to records of the Eastern Jin, the earliest known dialect of Nanjing was an ancient Wu dialect. After the Wu Hu uprising, the Jin Emperor and many northern Chinese fled south, establishing the new capital Jiankang in what is modern-day Nanjing.[11]

One prominent historical speaker of the Wu dialect was Emperor Yangdi of the Sui dynasty and his Empress Xiao. Emperor Xuan of Western Liang, a member of Emperor Wu of Liang's court, was Empress Xiao's grandfather and he most likely learned the Wu dialect at Jiankang.[12][13]

A "ballad–narrative" (說晿詞話) known as "The Story of Xue Rengui Crossing the Sea and Pacifying Liao" (薛仁貴跨海征遼故事), which is about the Tang dynasty hero Xue Rengui,[14] is believed to have been written in the Suzhou dialect of Wu.[15]

Origins

Like most other branches of Chinese, Wu mostly descends from Middle Chinese, which more or less supplanted the pre-existing language. This language, called Old Wu–Min, was one of the earliest splits from Northern Chinese and is still preserved in the Min dialects of Fujian that also originate from this language. Wu dialects, like those of Min, retain many ancient characteristics and are considered some of the most historic dialects. Wu was, however, more heavily influenced by northern dialects throughout its development than Min, as, for example, in its lenition of unreleased /k/, /t/, /p/ finals into glottal stops, which also happened in the Mandarin dialects before disappearing in most others. Some Mandarin dialects, especially ones farther south, still possess the glottal stops while some Wu dialects have entirely lost them. Most Min dialects, however, completely retain the series. These developments in Wu are likely areal influences due to its geographical closeness to North China, the ease of transport with many waterways in the north, the placement of the Southern Song capital in Hangzhou, as well as to the high rate of education in this region.

As early as the time of Guo Pu (276–324), speakers easily perceived differences between dialects in different parts of China including the area where Wu dialects are spoken today.[16]

During the Wu Hu uprising and the Disaster of Yongjia in 311, 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. From the 4th to the 5th century, Northern people moved into Wu areas, adding characteristics to the lexicon of Northern Wu, traces of which can still be found in Northern Wu varieties today.[17]

During the Ming dynasty, Wu speakers moved into Jianghuai Mandarin speaking regions, influencing the Tairu and Tongtai dialects of Jianghuai.[18] During the time between the 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 lingua franca within the region, eclipsing the status of the Suzhou dialect. However, due to its pastiche of features from different languages, it is rarely used to infer historical information about the Wu dialect family and is less representative of Wu than the Suzhou dialect.

Post-1949

A sign in Lishui urging people to speak Mandarin: "Speak Mandarin well—It's easier for all of us."

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the strong promotion of Mandarin in the Wu-speaking region yet again influenced the development of Wu Chinese. Wu was gradually excluded from most modern media and schools. Public organizations were required to use Mandarin. With the influx of a migrant non-Wu-speaking population, the near total conversion of public media and organizations to the exclusive use of Mandarin as well as radical Mandarin promotion measures, the modernization and standardization of or literacy in Wu dialects became improbable and left them more prone to Mandarinization. The promotion measures, which at present mostly consist of signs like the one pictured, are primarily aimed at limiting the usage of local dialects in conducting public or administrative affairs, although it, like the smoking ban, is commonly violated and it is not so uncommon to hear people speaking local dialects in a government office or a bank. The usage of local dialects in all other spheres is officially tolerated. Standardization of dialects, however, may be perceived as a precursor to possible regionalism, so this, too, would most likely be deterred. On the other hand, few speakers consider their dialect important enough to be written or standardized. To most speakers, dialects are in essence a wholly oral phenomenon.

It is not uncommon to encounter children who grew up with a regional variant of Mandarin as their mother tongue with little or no fluency in a Wu variety at all.[19] However, this is primarily when parents are speakers of different dialects and communicate in Mandarin and more rarely due to the parents' attitudes towards using dialect, which most associate with the warmth of home and family life. Many people have noticed this trend and thus call for the preservation and documentation of not only Wu but all Chinese dialects. The first major attempt was the Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects, which surveyed 2,791 locations across the nation, including 121 Wu locations (a step up from the two locations in PKU's earlier surveys), and led to the formation of an elaborate database including digital recordings of all locations;[20] however, this database is not available to the general public. The atlas's editor, Cao Zhiyun, considers many of these dialects "endangered" and has introduced the term 濒危方言 (Languages in DANGER) or "endangered dialects" into the Chinese language to raise people's attention to the issue,[21] while others try to draw attention to how the dialects fall under the scope of UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage and as such deserve to be preserved and respected.

More TV programs are appearing in Wu varieties and nearly every town has at least one show in their dialect. However, they are no longer permitted to air during prime time.[22] They are generally more playful than serious and the majority of these shows, such as Hangzhou's 阿六头说新闻 "Old Liutou tells you the news", provide local or regional news in the dialect, but most are limited to fifteen minutes of airtime. Popular video sites such as Youku and Tudou also host a variety of user-uploaded audio and visual media in many Wu dialects, most of which are dialectal TV shows, although some are user-created songs and the like. A number of popular books are also appearing to teach people how to speak the Shanghai, Suzhou, and Wenzhou dialects but they are more playful and entertaining than serious attempts at promoting literacy or standardization.

Jianghuai Mandarin has replaced Wu as the language of multiple counties in Jiangsu. An example of this is Zaicheng Town in Lishui County; both Jianghuai and Wu dialect were spoken in several towns in Lishui, with Wu being spoken by more people in more towns than Jianghuai. The Wu dialect is called "old Zaicheng Speech", while the Jianghuai dialect is called "new Zaicheng speech", with Wu dialect being driven rapidly to extinction. Only old people use it to talk to relatives. The Jianghuai dialect has been present there for about a century, even though all of the surrounding are Wu speaking. Jianghuai was always confined inside the town itself until the 1960s; at present, it is overtaking Wu.[23]

Number of speakers

Wu Chinese was once historically dominant north of the Yangtze River and most of what is now Anhui province during the Sui dynasty. Its strength in areas north of the Yangtze vastly declined from the late Tang dynasty until the late Ming dynasty, when the first characteristics of Early Modern Wu were formed. During the early Qing period, Wu speakers represented about 20% of the whole Chinese population. This percentage drastically declined after the Taiping Rebellion devastated the Wu-speaking region, and it was reduced to about 8% by 1984, when the total number of speakers was estimated to be 77 million.[24]

Diachronic study of Wu

There has been considerable attention drawn to the diachronic study of Wu,[25] especially since the massive disruptions of the previous two centuries and the implementation of Mandarin have likely left an indelible mark on many dialects. This has led many historical linguists and dialectologists to wonder what the dialects would be like if they had continued to develop in isolation. The attention towards hypothetical ancestral forms can be viewed with some scrutiny, since language in general is always prone to exterior influences. Whether a dialect is considered pure or authentic is mostly a matter of taste. Chinese dialects continually interact and influence each other regardless of whether it is a forcibly imposed official dialect or a neighboring one. Indeed, diglossia is the norm throughout most of the world, so it is only natural that such contact would influence both.

Origins

Wu is sometimes considered to be one of the first or most ancient dialects, since the region was the first one settled that was non-contiguous with the other Chinese states. Proto-Wu or Old Wu–Min is also the language from which the Min dialects evolved as the populace migrated farther south, so some knowledge of this language would not only offer insight into the development of these dialects and Sino-Tibetan but also into the indigenous languages of the region, knowledge of which would also be invaluable towards establishing the phylogeny of related Asian languages and towards reconstructing them.

According to traditional history, Taibo of Wu settled in the area during the Shang dynasty, bringing along a large section of the population and Chinese administrative practices to form the state of Wu.[26] The state of Wu might have been ruled by a Chinese minority along with sinified Yue peoples, and the bulk of the population would have remained Yue until later migrations and absorption into the greater Chinese populace (though many likely fled south as well). Many have wondered about what effect the Yue people's language may have had on the dialect spoken there, since, for example, names and other social practices in the state of Yue are markedly different from the rest of Chinese civilization.[27]

Bernhard Karlgren, on the other hand, noted that the Tang koine was adopted by most speakers in China (except for those in Fujian) with only slight remnants of "vulgar" speech from pre-Tang times, which he believed were preserved among the lower classes,[28] albeit this makes many presumptions about Tang China's class structure and sociolinguistic situation. Most linguists today refer to these remnants as dialectal strata or substrata. In many ways, the koiné can be considered the language from which Wu dialects evolved, with the earlier language leaving behind a pre-Tang dialectal stratum which itself may have included a substratum from the Yue language(s).

Western dialectologists have found a small handful of words that appear to be part of an Austroasiatic substratum in many Wu and Min dialects. Indeed, Mandarin Chinese also possesses some words of Austroasiatic origin, such as the original name of the Yangtze River "江" (jiāng; Old Chinese *krung, compared to Old Vietnamese *krong), which has evolved into the word for river.[29] Min dialects, which were less affected by the koine, definitely appear to possess an Austroasiatic substratum, such as a Min word for shaman or spirit healer such as in Jian’ou Min toŋ³ which appears to be cognate with Vietnamese ʔdoŋ², Written Mon doŋ, and Santali dōŋ which all have meanings similar to the Min word.[30]

The most notable examples are the word for person in some Wu varieties as *nong, usually written as 儂 nóng in Chinese, and the word for wet in many Wu and Min dialects with a /t/ initial which is clearly in no way related to the Chinese word 濕 shī but cognate with Vietnamese đầm. Min dialects notably retain the bilabial nasal coda for this word.

Analysis of the work Song of the Yue Boatman (Chinese: 越人歌; pinyin: Yuèrén Gē), a song in the Yue language transcribed by a Chinese official in Chinese characters, clearly points to a Tai language rather than an Austroasiatic one.[31] Chinese discussion of Wenzhounese often mentions the strong Tai affinities the dialect possesses.[32] The Zhuang languages in Guangxi, for example, are also Tai, so it would appear that both Tai and Austroasiatic speakers populated southern China before the Chinese expansion. The term Yue was clearly applied indiscriminately to any non-Chinese in the area that the Chinese encountered. The impact of these languages still appears to be fairly minimal overall.

Though Sino-Tibetan, Tai–Kadai, and Austroasiatic are mostly considered to be unrelated to each other, Laurent Sagart has proposed some possible phylogenetic affinities. Specifically, Tai–Kadai and Sino-Tibetan could possibly both belong to the Austronesian language family (not to be confused with Austroasiatic) due to a scattering of cognates between their ancestral forms, and there is also some, albeit much more tenuous, evidence to suggest that Austroasiatic should also be included, however his views are but one among competing hypotheses about the phylogeny of these languages, see the Sino-Austronesian languages article for some further detail.

It does appear that Wu dialects have had non-Sinitic influences, and many contain words cognate with those of other languages in various strata. These words however are few and far between, and Wu on the whole is most strongly influenced by Tang Chinese rather than any other linguistic influence.

Written sources

There are few written sources of study for Wu, and research is generally concentrated on modern speech forms rather than texts. Written Chinese has always been in the classical form, so Wu speakers would have written in this classical form and read it in a literary form of their dialect based on the phonetic distinctions outlined in rhyme dictionaries. Therefore, no text in classical Chinese from the region would give a clear notion about the actual speech of the writer, although there may have been cleverly disguised puns based on local pronunciations that are lost on modern readers or other dialect speakers. Shaoxing opera, for example, is performed in the Shaoxing dialect, however the register is more literary than oral.

There are still a number of primary documents available, but they do not always give a clear sense of the dialects' historical pronunciation. They do often offer insight into lexical differences. Most of the sources for diachronic Wu study lie in the folk literature of the region. Since the average person was illiterate and the literate were often traditionalists who possibly perceived their local form of Chinese as a degenerated version of a classical ideal, very little was recorded, although local vocabulary often sneaks into written records.

The main sources of study are from the Ming and Qing period, since the dialectal differences were not as obvious until Ming times,[33] and lie in historical folk songs, tanci (Chinese: 彈詞; pinyin: táncí, a kind of ballad or lyric poem), local records, legendary stories, baihua novels, educational material produced for the region, notes which have survived among individuals' effects, the linguistic descriptions made by foreigners (primarily by missionaries), and the bibles translated into Wu dialects. These all give glimpses into the past, but except for the bibles, are not so useful for phonological studies. They are, however, of tremendous importance for diachronic studies of vocabulary and to a lesser extent grammar and syntax.

Ming and Qing Wu

The diachronic study of written Ming and Qing Wu, the time when the dialects began to take on wholly unique features, can be placed into three stages: the Early Period, the Middle Period, and the Late Period.

These works contain a small handful of unique grammatical features, some of which are not found in contemporary Mandarin, classical Chinese, or in contemporary Wu dialects. They do contain many of the unique features present in contemporary Wu such as pronouns, but clearly indicate that not all of the earlier unique features of these Wu dialects were carried into the present. These works also possess a number of characters uniquely formed to express features not found in the classical language and used some common characters as phonetic loans (see Chinese character classification) to express other uniquely Wu vocabulary.

Wu-speaking writers who wrote in vernacular Mandarin often left traces of their native varieties in their works, as can be found in Guanchang Xianxing Ji and Fubao Zatan (负曝闲谈).

Another source from this period is from the work of the missionary Joseph Edkins, who gathered large amounts of data and published several educational works on Shanghainese as well as a bible in Shanghainese and a few other major Wu varieties.

Works in this period also saw an explosion of new vocabulary in Wu dialects to describe their changing world. This clearly reflects the great social changes which were occurring during the time.[34]

Further reading

There are currently three works available on the topic:

Classification

Wu's place within the greater scope of Sinitic varieties is less easily typified than protoypically northern Chinese such as Mandarin or prototypically southern Chinese such as Cantonese. Its original classification, along with the other Sinitic varieties, was established in 1937 by Li Fang-Kuei, whose boundaries more or less have remained the same[5] and were adopted by Yuan Jiahua in his influential 1961 dialect primer^ .

The sole basis of Li's classification was the evolution of Middle Chinese voiced stops.[5] In the original sense, a Wu dialect was by definition one which retained voiced initials. This definition is problematic considering the devoicing process which has begun in many southern Wu dialects that are surrounded by dialects which retain the ancestral voicing. The loss of voicing in a dialect does not entail that its other features will suddenly become dramatically different from the dialects it has had long historic ties with. It furthermore would place Old Xiang in this category. Therefore, more elaborate systems have developed, but they still mostly delineate the same regions. Regardless of the justification, the Wu region has been clearly outlined, and Li's boundary in some ways has remained the de facto standard.

In Jerry Norman's usage, Wu dialects can be considered "central dialects" or dialects that are clearly in a transition zone containing features that typify both northern and southern Chinese. .[35]

Varieties

Dialectologists traditionally establish linguistic boundaries based on several overlapping isoglosses of linguistic features. One of the critical historical factors for these boundaries lies in the movement of the population of speakers.[36] This is often determined by the administrative boundaries established during imperial times. As such, imperial boundaries are essential for delineating one variety from another, and many varieties' isogloss clusters line up perfectly with the county boundaries established in imperial times, although some counties contain more than one variety and others may span several counties.[37] Another factor that influences movement and transportation as well as the establishment of administrative boundaries is geography.[36] Northernmost Zhejiang and Jiangsu are very flat, in the middle of a river delta, and as such are more uniform than the more mountainous regions farther south towards Fujian. The Taihu varieties, like Mandarin in the flat northern plains, are more homogeneous than Southern Wu, which has a significantly greater diversity of linguistic forms, and this is likely a direct result of geography. Coastal varieties also share more featural affinities, likely because the East China Sea provides a means of transportation. The same phenomenon can be seen with Min 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 varieties than Northern Wu, making it typologically much different from the rest of Wu.

A map of the main groups of Wu varieties in China. See also map at Wu variations page and pie chart at Wu proportions pie chart page

In the Language Atlas of China (1987), Wu was divided into six subgroups:

Chinese dialectologist Cao Zhiyun has rearranged some of the divisions based on a larger corpus of data. According to Cao, Southern Wu can be divided into three broad divisions (note that he is using the pre-republican boundaries for the cited locations):[38]

Phonology

The Wu dialects are notable among Chinese varieties in having kept the "muddy" (voiced; whispery voiced word-initially) plosives and fricatives of Middle Chinese, such as /b/, /d/, /ɡ/, /z/, /v/, etc., thus maintaining the three-way contrast of Middle Chinese stop consonants and affricates, /p pʰ b/, /tɕ tɕʰ dʑ/, etc.[39] (For example, 「凍 痛 洞」 /t tʰ d/, where other varieties have only /t tʰ/.) Because Wu dialects never lost these voiced obstruents, the tone split of Middle Chinese may still be 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 Wenzhounese for examples of Wu phonology.

Literary and vernacular pronunciations in Shanghainese

字 Pinyin English translation Literary Vernacular
家 jiā house tɕia˥˨ ka˥˨
顏 yán face ɦiɪ˩˩˧ ŋʱɛ˩˩˧
櫻 yīng cherry ʔiŋ˥˨ ʔã˥˨
孝 xiào filial piety ɕiɔ˧˧˥ hɔ˧˧˥
學 xué learning ʱjaʔ˨ ʱoʔ˨
物 wù thing vəʔ˨ mʱəʔ˨
網 wǎng web ʱwɑŋ˩˩˧ mʱɑŋ˩˩˧
鳳 fèng male phoenix voŋ˩˩˧ boŋ˩˩˧
肥 féi fat vi˩˩˧ bi˩˩˧
日 rì sun zəʔ˨ ȵʱiɪʔ˨
人 rén person zən˩˩˧ ȵʱin˩˩˧
鳥 niǎo bird ʔȵiɔ˧˧˥ tiɔ˧˧˥

Grammar

The pronoun systems of many Wu dialects are 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.[40][41]

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 – a quality shared with Cantonese – as shown by the following examples:

Wu Wu translation Mandarin Mandarin translation
本書交關好看 the volume [of] book is very good 書很好看 the book is very good
我支筆 my stick [of] pen 我的筆 my pen
渠碗粥 his bowl [of] congee 他的粥 his congee

Plural pronouns

Wu dialects vary in the way they pluralize pronouns. In the Suzhou dialect, second- and third-person pronouns are suffixed with [toʔ], while the first-person plural is a separate root, [ni], from the singular. In Shanghainese, the first-person pronoun is suffixed with 伲, and third-person with [la˦] (underlying /la˥˧/), but the second-person plural is a separate root, [nʌ˨˧]. In the Haiyan dialect, first- and third-person pronouns are pluralized with [la], but the second-person plural is a separate root [na].[42]

Classifiers

All nouns could have just one classifier in Shanghainese.[43]

Examples

Shanghainese IPA Literal meaning Actual meaning
其 勒 門口頭 立 勒許。 [ɦi le məŋ.kʰɤɯ.dɤɯ lɪʔ lɐˑ.he] (third person) (past participle) doorway (particle) stand existed He was standing at the door.

Vocabulary

Like other varieties of Southern Chinese, Wu Chinese retains some archaic vocabulary from Classical Chinese, Middle Chinese, and Old Chinese. For instance, for "to speak" or "speaking", Wu dialects, with the exception of Hangzhou dialect, use góng (Simplified Chinese: 讲; Traditional Chinese: 講), whereas Mandarin uses shuō (Simplified Chinese: 说; Traditional Chinese: 說). Furthermore, in Guangfeng and Yushan counties of Jiangxi province, 曰 [je] or 'yuē', is generally preferred over its Mandarin counterpart. In Shangrao county of Jiangxi province, Simplified Chinese: 话 Traditional Chinese: 話 pinyin: Huà/[wa] is preferred over the spoke Mandarin version of the word for "to speak" or "speaking".

Examples

All IPA transcriptions and examples listed below are from Shanghainese.

Wu Wu vocabulary pronunciation Equivalent Mandarin Chinese vocabulary Equivalent Mandarin vocabulary pronunciation in Wu Meaning
許 [hy] 那 [na] (particle)
汏 [da] 洗 [si] to wash
囥 [kɔŋ] 藏 [zɔŋ] to hide something
隑 [ɡe] 斜靠 [zia kʰɔ] to lean
廿 [nie] 二十 [nʲi ʒɐʔ] twenty (the Mandarin equivalent, 二十, is also used to a lesser extent, mostly in its literary pronunciation)
弗/勿 [vəʔ] 不 [pəʔ] no, not

「立」(站) [liɪʔ] (ze) to stand
「囡」 [nø] child, whelp (It is pronounced as nān in Mandarin.)
「睏」(睡) [kʰwəŋ] (zø) to sleep
「尋」(找) [ʑ̊iɲ] (tsɔ) to find
「戇」 [ɡɔɲ] foolish, stupid. (It is a cognate of the Minnan 戇 gōng [goŋ˧].)
「揎」 [ɕyø] to strike (a person)
「逐」(追) [zoʔ] or [tsoʔ] (tsø) to chase
「焐」 [u] to make warm, to warm up (ex. 焐焐熱)
「肯」 [kʰəɲ] to permit, to allow
「事體」 [z̥z tʰi] thing (business, affair, matter)
「歡喜」 [hø ɕi] to like, to be keen on something, to be fond of, to love
「物事」 [məʔ z̥z̩] things (more specifically, material things)

In Wu dialects, the morphology of the words are similar, but the characters are switched around. Not all Wu Chinese words exhibit this phenomenon, only some words in some dialects.

Colloquialisms

In 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 transcriptions and examples listed below are from Shanghainese.

Literature

The genres of kunqu opera and tanci song, appearing in the Ming Dynasty, were the first instances of the use of Wu dialect in literature. By the turn of the 20th century it was used in several novels that had prostitution as a subject.[44] In many of these novels, Wu is mainly used as dialog of prostitute characters. In one work, Shanghai Flowers by Han Bangqing (T: 韓邦慶, S: 韩邦庆, P: Hán Bāngqìng), all of the dialog is in Wu.[45] Wu originally developed in genres related to oral performance. It was used in manners related to oral performance when it proliferated in written literature and it was widely used in fiction about prostitutes, a particular genre, and not in other genres. Donald B. Snow, author of Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular, compared the development of Wu in this manner to the patterns of Baihua and Japanese vernacular writing.[45]

According to Jean Duval, author of "The Nine-Tailed Turtle: Pornography or 'fiction of exposure," at the time The Nine-tailed Turtle by Zhang Chunfan (T: 張春帆, S: 张春帆, Pinyin: Zhāng Chūnfān) was published, it was one of the most popular novels written in the Wu dialect.[46] Magnificent Dreams in Shanghai (T:海上繁華夢, S: 海上繁华梦, P: Hǎishàng Fánhuá Mèng) by Sun Jiazhen (T: 孫家振, S: 孙家振, P: Sūn Jiāzhèn) was another example of a prostitute novel with Wu dialog from the turn of the 20th century.[47]

Snow wrote that Wu literature "achieved a certain degree of prominence" by 1910.[45] After 1910 there had been no novels which were as popular as The Nine-tailed Turtle or the critical acclaim garnered by Shanghai Flowers. In the popular fiction of the early 20th century the usage of Wu remained in use in prostitute dialog but, as asserted by Snow, "apparently" did not extend beyond that.[45] In 1926 Hu Shi stated that of all of the Chinese dialects, within literature, Wu had the brightest future.[45] Snow concluded that instead Wu dialect writing became "a transient phenomenon that died out not long after its growth gathered steam."[45]

Snow argued that the primary reason was the increase of prestige and importance in Baihua, and that one other contributing reason was changing market factors since Shanghai's publishing industry, which grew, served all of China and not just Shanghai.[45] Duval argued that many Chinese critics had a low opinion of Wu works, mainly originating from the eroticism within them, and that contributed to the decline in Wu literature.[45]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Wu Chinese". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Chuan-Chao Wang; Qi-Liang Ding; Huan Tao; Hui Li (2012). "Comment on "Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa"". Science. 335 (6069): 657. doi:10.1126/science.1207846. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
  4. ↑ 奉贤金汇方言"语音最复杂" 元音巅峰值达20个左右 (in Chinese). Eastday. 14 February 2012.
  5. 1 2 3 Jerry Norman (2008) [1988]. Chinese. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
  6. ↑ "Wu Language". Greentranslations.com. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
  7. ↑ Nils Göran David Malmqvist (2010). Bernhard Karlgren: portrait of a scholar. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 302. ISBN 1-61146-000-X. Retrieved 2012-03-10. In 1925, Chao Yuen Ren returned to Qinghua University. The following year, he began his comprehensive study of the Wu dialects in the lower Yangzi valley. In 1929, he was appointed head of the section of linguistics in the Academia Sinica and became responsible for the planning and the()
  8. ↑ N. G. D. Malmqvist (2010). Bernhard Karlgren: Portrait of a Scholar. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 1-61146-001-8. Retrieved 2012-03-10. In 1925, Chao Yuen Ren returned to Qinghua University. The following year, he began his comprehensive study of the Wu dialects in the lower Yangzi valley. In 1929, he was appointed head of the section of linguistics in the Academia Sinica and became responsible for the planning and the()
  9. ↑ 蒋冰冰 (2003). 吴语宣州片方言音韵研究. Shanghai: 华东师范大学出版社. p. 1. ISBN 7-5617-3299-6.
  10. ↑ Starostin, Sergei (2009). Reconstruction of Old Chinese Phonology. Shanghai: 上海教育出版社. p. 3. ISBN 978-7-5444-2616-9.
  11. ↑ Maria Kurpaska (2010). Chinese language(s): a look through the prism of The great dictionary of modern Chinese dialects. Volume 215 of Trends in linguistics: Studies and monographs (illustrated ed.). Walter de Gruyter. p. 161. ISBN 3-11-021914-X.
  12. ↑ Victor Cunrui Xiong (2006). Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty: his life, times, and legacy (illustrated, annotated ed.). SUNY Press. p. 19. ISBN 0-7914-6587-X. Retrieved 2012-03-10. Yangdi also conversed fluently with his wife in the Wu dialect of the South. For a Northerner, a high level of competence in this dialect was no mean feat: It required years of early exposure. Yangdi probably picked it up at an early age from Lady Xiao, whose grandfather Xiao Cha 蕭詧 grew up at the court of Liang Wudi 梁武帝 in Jiankang, a Wu dialect area, before setting up his own court in Jiangling.()
  13. ↑ Victor Cunrui Xiong (2006). Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty: his life, times, and legacy (illustrated, annotated ed.). SUNY Press. p. 266. ISBN 0-7914-6587-X. Retrieved 2012-03-10. 19. On Yangdi's divinatory skills and proficiency in the Wu dialect, see ZZTJ 185.5775()
  14. ↑ Boudewijn Walraven; Remco E. Breuker (2007). Remco E. Breuker, ed. Korea in the middle: Korean studies and area studies : essays in honour of Boudewijn Walraven. Volume 153 of CNWS publications (illustrated ed.). CNWS Publications. p. 341. ISBN 90-5789-153-0. Retrieved 2012-03-10. A prosimetrical rendition, entitled Xue Rengui kuahai zheng Liao gushi 薛仁貴跨海征遼故事 (The story of Xue Rengui crossing the sea and Pacifying Liao), which shares its opening prose paragraph with the Xue Rengui zheng Liao shilüe, is preserved in a printing of 1471; it is one of the shuochang cihua 說晿詞話 (ballad-narratives()
  15. ↑ Boudewijn Walraven; Remco E. Breuker (2007). Remco E. Breuker, ed. Korea in the middle: Korean studies and area studies : essays in honour of Boudewijn Walraven. Volume 153 of CNWS publications (illustrated ed.). CNWS Publications. p. 342. ISBN 90-5789-153-0. Retrieved 2012-03-10. for telling and singing) which were discovered in the suburbs of Shanghai in 1967.3 While these shuochang cihua had been printed in modern-day Beijing, their language suggests that they had been composed in the Wu-dialect area of Suzhou and surroundings,()
  16. ↑ W. South Coblin (1983). A handbook of Eastern Han sound glosses. Chinese University Press. p. 25. ISBN 962-201-258-2.
  17. ↑ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Volume 65. University of London. School of Oriental and African Studies. 2002. p. 540. Retrieved 23 September 2011. On top of this lies the main corpus of Wu lexical material, reflecting immigration from the north in the fourth and fifth centuries. Within this layer we then find in the Northern Wu area unique features apparently reflecting mid-to (the University of Michigan)
  18. ↑ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Volume 65. University of London. School of Oriental and African Studies. 2002. p. 541. Retrieved 23 September 2011. For example, the eastern-most languages of the Tairu or Tongtai branch saw significant immigration from Wu-speaking areas in early Ming times, while in the same period the Huang-Xiao area on the western flank of the family was inundated (the University of Michigan)
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  22. ↑ Song, Wei (14 Jan 2011). "Dialects to be phased out of prime time TV". China Daily. Retrieved 29 May 2011.
  23. ↑ Journal of Asian Pacific communication, Volume 16, Issues 1-2. Multilingual Matters. 2006. p. 336. Retrieved 23 September 2011. (the University of Michigan)
  24. ↑ "Chinese, Wu". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
  25. ↑ Ballard, William (1989). "Pig, Tone Sandhi and Wumin". Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale. 18 (2).
  26. ↑ Yuan Jiahua (2006). 汉语方言概要. Beijing: 语文出版社. p. 55. ISBN 7-80126-474-6.
  27. ↑ Henry, Eric (May 2007). "The Submerged History of Yuè". Sino-Platonic Papers. 176.
  28. ↑ Norman, Jerry L.; W. South Coblin (Oct–Dec 1995). "A New Approach to Chinese Historical Linguistics". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 115 (4): 576. doi:10.2307/604728.
  29. ↑ Jerry Norman (2008) [1988]. Chinese. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
  30. ↑ Jerry Norman (2008) [1988]. Chinese. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 18–19. ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
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  32. ↑ 游汝杰 (March 1999). "Some special grammatical features of the Wenzhou dialect and their corresponding forms in Tai languages (1998)". 游汝杰自选集. Guilin: 227–245. ISBN 7-5633-2773-8.
  33. ↑ 石汝杰 (2006). 明清吴语和现代方言研究. Shanghai: 上海辞书出版社. p. 141. ISBN 7-5326-2162-6.
  34. ↑ 石汝杰 (2006). 明清吴语和现代方言研究. Shanghai: 上海辞书出版社. pp. 141–9. ISBN 7-5326-2162-6.
  35. ↑ Jerry Norman (2008) [1988]. Chinese. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 197–8. ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
  36. 1 2 王文胜 (2008). 处州方言的地理语言学研究. Beijing: 中国社会科学出版社. ISBN 978-7-5004-6637-6.
  37. ↑ Yuen Ren Society. "How many Chinese dialects are there, anyway?". Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  38. ↑ 曹志耘 (2002). 南部吴语语音研究. Beijing: The Commercial Press. pp. 2, 5. ISBN 7-100-03533-3.
  39. ↑ Yan (2006)
  40. ↑ "Wu Chinese". Cis.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
  41. ↑ The Sino-Tibetan Languages by Graham Thurgood & Randy J. LaPolla, p.94
  42. ↑ Graham Thurgood; Randy J. LaPolla (2003). Graham Thurgood, Randy J. LaPolla, ed. The Sino-Tibetan languages. Volume 3 of Routledge language family series (illustrated ed.). Psychology Press. p. 86. ISBN 0-7007-1129-5. Retrieved 2012-03-10.
  43. ↑ Graham Thurgood; Randy J. LaPolla (2003). Graham Thurgood, Randy J. LaPolla, ed. The Sino-Tibetan languages. Volume 3 of Routledge language family series (illustrated ed.). Psychology Press. p. 85. ISBN 0-7007-1129-5. Retrieved 2012-03-10. In general, the Southern dialects have a greater number of classifiers than the Northern. The farther north one travels, the smaller the variety of classifiers found. In Dunganese, a Gansu dialect of Northern Chinese spoken in Central Asia, only one classifier, 個 [kə], is used; and this same classifier has almost become the cover classifier for all nouns in Lánzhou of Gansu too. The tendency to use one general classifier for all nouns is also found to a greater or lesser extent in many Shanxi dialects, some Shandong dialects, and even the Shanghai dialect of Wu and Standard Mandarin (SM). The choice of classifiers for individual nouns is particular to each dialects. For example, altohugh the preferred classifier across dialects for 'human being' is 個 and its cognates, 隻 in its dialect forms is widely used in the Hakka and Yue dialects of Guangxi and western Guangdong provinces as well as in the Northern Min dialects and some Xiang dialects in Hunan.
  44. ↑ Snow, p. 33.
  45. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Snow, p. 34.
  46. ↑ Snow, p. 261.
  47. ↑ Snow, p. 34.

Notes

Wu Chinese edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Wu Chinese
Wikivoyage has content for Wu phrasebook.

Resources on Wu dialects

A BBS set up in 2004, in which topics such as phonology, grammar, orthography and romanization of Wu Chinese are widely talked about. The cultural and linguistic diversity within China is also a significant concerning of this forum.

A website 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 etc.

Excellent reference on Wu Chinese, including tones of the sub-dialects.

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