Taihu Wu () or Northern Wu () 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 Wu, and Ningbo Wu 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. As such, in Jiangnan itself, multiple subdialects of Wu competed for the position of prestige dialect.
In 1984, around 85 million speakers are mutually intelligible with Shanghainese.
Phonology
Taihu Wu varieties tend to preserve historical voiced initials. The number of phonemic vowels can reach numbers higher than that of some Germanic languages. Taihu Wu varieties typically have phonemic 7-8 tones, though some can go as high as 12 or as low as 5, and they all have highly complex tone sandhi.
List of Taihu Wu dialects Su–Jia–Hu (Suzhou–Jiaxing–Huzhou, ) Su–Hu–Jia (Suzhou–Shanghai–Jiaxing, ) – million speakers in 1987 Suzhou dialect (Jiangsu) Shanghainese (Shanghai; includes further subgroups) Jiaxing dialect (Zhejiang) Haining dialect (Zhejiang) Kunshan dialect (Jiangsu) Changshu dialect (, Jiangsu) Shadi dialect (, Jiangsu and Shanghai; also known as the Qihai or Chongming dialect) Wuxi dialect (Jiangsu; transitional with Piling) Tiaoxi () – 3 million speakers in 1987 Huzhou dialect (Zhejiang) Deqing dialect (Zhejiang) Tongxiang dialect (Zhejiang) Southeast Guangde dialect (Anhui) Northwestern Wu Piling (, spoken in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, transitional with Jianghuai Mandarin) – 8 million speakers in 1987 Changzhou dialect (Jiangsu) Jiangyin dialect (Jiangsu) Danyang dialect (Jiangsu) Hangzhou () – 1.2 million speakers in 1987 Hangzhou dialect (Zhejiang) Northern Zhejiang Lin–Shao () – 7.8 million speakers in 1987 Shaoxing dialect (Zhejiang) Lin'an dialect (Zhejiang) Yongjiang () or Mingzhou () – 4 million speakers in 1987 Ningbo dialect (Zhejiang) Zhoushan dialect (Zhejiang) Jinxiang dialect (, Zhejiang)
References
Works cited
Further reading
[Lili Wu is near the confluence of Suzhou, Jiaxing and Shanghai dialects]