Wu is a major group of Chinese languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang province, and parts of Jiangsu province, especially south of the Yangtze River, which make up the Wu cultural region. The Wu languages are at times simply called Shanghainese, especially when introduced to foreigners. The Suzhounese variety was the prestige dialect of Wu as of the 19th century but had been replaced in status by Shanghainese by the turn of the 20th century, which coincided with a period of rapid language change in the city. The languages of Northern Wu constitute a language family and are mutually intelligible, while those of Southern Wu do not form a phylogenetic language family and are not mutually intelligible.
Historical linguists consider Wu interesting because of its distinct nature. The Wu languages typically preserve all voiced initials of medieval Chinese, as well as the checked tone in the form of a glottal stop. Wu varieties also have morphological and syntactic innovations, as well as vocabulary only found in the Wu grouping. It is also of note that the influential linguist Chao Yuen Ren was a native speaker of Changzhounese, a variety of Northern Wu. The Wu varieties, especially that of Suzhou, are traditionally perceived as soft in the ears of speakers of both Wu and non-Wu languages, leading to the idiom "the tender speech of Wu" ().
Names
Most speakers of Wu varieties do not readily identify with or are entirely unaware of the term for their speech, since the classificatory imposition of "Wu" used in linguistics today is a relatively recent coinage. Saying someone "speaks Wu" is therefore akin to saying someone "speaks a Romance language". It is not a particularly defined entity, unlike Standard Mandarin or Standard German.
Most speakers are aware of their local variety's affinities only with other similarly-classified varieties. They generally refer only to their local Wu variety, rather than to the dialect family as a whole. That is done typically by affixing ('speech') to a location's endonym. For example, () is used for Wenzhounese. Affixing is also common, and more typical of Northern Wu, as in (Wugniu: ) for the . Names for the group as a whole include:
Wu language (; Shanghainese ; Suzhounese ; Wuxinese ; 'Wu language'), the formal name and standard reference in dialectology literature. Wu topolect (), a common name that refers to Wu languages that appends ("dialect, topolect") instead of ("language"), at times perceived as derogatory. Wuyue language (), a poetic and historical name, highlighting the roots of the language in antiquity, specifically the culture of the Wu and Yue states during the Warring States period. Goetian, derived from the Japanese spelling of Wuyue (; ), is among the alternative names listed by Ethnologue. Derivations of the term into English via Japanese is associated with radical separatists, including auntologists. Jiang–Zhe speech (), a non-standard name meaning 'the speech of Jiangsu and Zhejiang', occasionally used to highlight the fact that the language is spoken across two provinces. Jiangnan speech (), a non-standard, less common name linking the language to the cultural region of Jiangnan. This is not to be confused with the Jiangnan Industrial Groups Koiné spoken in Xiangtan, which is classified as a variety of Mandarin. Contrasts with Jiāngběihuà (), ie. Huai Chinese.
History
It is believed that Han Chinese peoples first arrived at the area during pre-dynastic history. After the migrations preceding the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians, the vernacular that would later lead to modern Wu Chinese started taking shape, though the court language of Jiankang (today Nanjing) was still noticeably different to that of the commonfolk. A second migration wave during the Southern Song dynasty, this time to Lin'an (Hangzhou), led to the formation of the modern literary layer, and during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, many operatic traditions and vernacular texts began to appear. Later, during the Qing dynasty, missionaries began translating the Bible into various local varieties and recording the exact pronunciations of many varieties for the first time. During that time, the economic boom of Shanghai also happened, which led to its urban variety becoming the prestige variety over that of Suzhou.
The 20th century marked a pivotal moment of Wu linguistic change, as Standard Mandarin was promoted nation-wide, though the 21st century is seeing revival efforts for many Wu Chinese varieties.
Ancient and early dynastic Wu Before the migration of the Han Chinese peoples, the Jiangnan region was inhabited by Kra-Dai or Austroasiatic peoples, which were dubbed barbarians by the early Chinese.
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. The majority population of the state would have been the ancient Baiyue peoples, who had very different customs and practices compared to the Chinese.
It is said in Master Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals that the customs and languages of the states of Wu and Yue were the same. This refers not just to the Baiyue language of the area, but also of that of "Ancient Wu", a Sinitic language that was likely used only by nobility. The northern border of this Ancient Wu language is at the Huai River rather than the Yangtze like it is today, and its southern limits may have reached as far as Fujian, as Proto-Min may have been a daughter language to Ancient Wu, though this is not fully accepted. As early as the time of Guo Pu (275–324), speakers easily perceived differences between dialects in different parts of China, including the area where Ancient Wu was spoken. The language slowly receded from the north due to growing pressure from the Central Plains, until its northern limit was set near the Yangtze River towards the end of the Western Jin dynasty. However, all modern Wu varieties work within the Qieyun system and so Old Chinese dialect cannot be the primary origin of Wu Chinese today.
Non-Sinitic strata
It is known that Wu languages inherited a significant number of loanwords of Kra-Dai origin. A study of the variety spoken in Maqiao, a suburb of Shanghai, found that 126 out of around a thousand lexical items surveyed were of Kra-Dai origin. Terms such as (Wugniu: 8loq-su1 "aubergine") are also shared between other Sinitic languages (eg. Teochew, Peng'im: lag8 sou1) as well as Kra-Dai languages (cf. Standard Zhuang ). Shared terms with Austroasiatic languages have also been suggested, though many of them, such as Vietnamese đầm, bèo, and kè, have also been argued to be areal features, Chinese words in disguise, or long shots.
Kra-DaiMaqiao WudialectGloss-m, -n become -ŋtam33 (Zhuang) təŋ354 step fa:n31 (Sui) fəŋ55 du53 snore/to snore ɕam21 (Zhuang) pəʔ33 ɕhaŋ435 to have fun () final consonant/vowel missingva:n31li55 (Zhuang) ɑ:31 li33 still, yet ；tsai55 (Zhuang) tsɔ:435 to plow ()thaŋ55 (Dai) dᴇ354 hole/pit hai21 (Zhuang) hɑ53 filth za:n11 (Bouyei) ɕhy55 zᴇ53 building/room kăi13 (Dai) kᴇ435 to draw close to fɤŋ13 (Dai) fɛ435 to sway/to swing ɕa:ŋ33 (Bouyei) ɕhɑ55 tsɑ53 capable/competent tjeu44 (Maonan) thɛ435 to crawl becoming final glottal stop -ʔloŋ21 (Zhuang) lɔʔ33 below/down ()kem55 (Zhuang) tɕiʔ33 ku53 cheek kam33 (Zhuang) kheʔ55 to press kau33 son213 (Lingao) khəʔ55 tɕoŋ55 to doze/to nap tɯ11 (Bouyei) ʔdəʔ55 end/extremity ka:u11 (Bouyei) kuaʔ55 to split/to crack peu55 (Sui) pəʔ33 ɕaŋ435 to have fun()Kra-DaiMaqiao WudialectGloss-m, -n become -ŋkam11(Dai) kaŋ354 to prop up/to brace tsam13(Sui) tshoŋ53 to bow the head final consonant/vowel missingve:n55(Zhuang) ve:55 to hang/to suspend ；lɒi55(Dai) lu354 mountain/hill ()xun—55 (Dai)ha:k55 (Zhuang) xɔ55 lɔ53 government official/official məu53(Dong) nɑ55 mo53 tadpole pai21(Zhuang) pɛ435 fu53 classifier for times ；la:m33(Zhuang) lɛ435 to tie up ()tsam33(Sui) tsɿ55 to bow the head (ɣa:i42) ɕa:i42(Zhuang) ɕɑ:354 very, quite, much becoming final glottal stop -ʔsa:ŋ33 səu53(Dong) seʔ33 zo55 ɦɯ11 wizard/magician tɕe31(Bouyei) tɕiʔ55 ɕhiŋ55 market/bazaar pleu55(Zhuang) pəʔ33 to move wen55(Dong) veʔ33 to pour ()thăi55(Dai) theʔ55 to weed ta55 jɯ55(Dai) teʔ55 to narrow one's eyes lom24(Zhuang) lɔʔ33 nɒn35 pitfall/to sink ɣa:i42 (ɕa:i42)(Zhuang) ʔɔʔ55 very/quite/much tom13 (Dai) thoʔ55 to cook/to boil ()
Though Sino-Tibetan, Kra-Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic are mostly considered to be unrelated to one another, Laurent Sagart has proposed some possible phylogenetic affinities. Specifically, Tai–Kadai and Sino-Tibetan could possibly both belong to the Sino-Austronesian language family (not to be confused with Austroasiatic) because of 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, and is not widely accepted. See the Sino-Austronesian languages article for some further detail.
It does appear that Wu varieties 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 other Chinese languages rather than any other linguistic influence.
Medieval Wu
This period is bookended by two major migration waves into the Wu-speaking area. The first was in the 4th century CE from primarily the mountains of Shandong, whereas the second happened during the 12th century CE, and originated from the Heluo region.
Early Medieval
Events such as the Wu Hu uprising and the Disaster of Yongjia during the Western Jin dynasty, collectively known as the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians, caused the imperial court to move from the Heluo region, along with a large migration wave from the north that lasted 150 years, primarily northern Jiangsu and much of Shandong, entered the Jiangnan region, establishing a new capital at Jiankang, modern-day Nanjing.
Migrants went as far south as central Zhejiang, though many settled in the geographically less challenging areas in the north, that is to say, the Yangtze Delta and the Hangjiahu Plain. Early stages of this period of change was likely marked by diglossia, with the commonfolk typically speaking Ancient Wu or their native Shandong or northern Jiangsu Chinese, and the nobility, both new migrants and old aristocracy, typically speaking a variety not dissimilar to that of early medieval Luoyang. This linguistic situation eventually led to the formation of modern Wu, with many early coincidental strata that are hard to differentiate today. It is unclear as to when exactly the language of the Baiyue became extinct, though during the Eastern Han dynasty, Kra-Dai words were recorded in the everyday vernacular of people in the region, and by the end of the Western Jin, the common language of the region was Sinitic, as will be explained below.
As early as the Eastern Wu dynasty, commentators criticized the speech of the Southern aristocracy (ie. that of the Wu-speaking areas), noting that it is neither Wu-sounding nor Northern. However, evidence suggests that the primary language among the populace was, in fact, Sinitic, although not one that was perceived as "civilized". This possible civilian language would be a common Jiangdong Sinitic language (), as is seen in the Book of Wei, which unflatteringly compares the speech of Jiangdong to the calls of wild animals. The court language of Jiankang at this time would not have been the same as the civilian Wu language, though it would have been closely related. This would also mark the time where Japanese Go-on (; Hepburn: go-on; pinyin: Wúyīn) readings were loaned, and it is accepted that these readings would have been loaned from the language variety of medieval Jiankang.