Introduction
The classification of Chinese languages here follow the hierarchical structure in western linguistics based on both common ancestral dialects and lexical similarities. Languages within each branch are more similar to each other than languages of other branches.
The ancient cultural centers of ancient Wu speaking regions i.e. Suzhou, Wenzhou, Xuancheng became different branches of Wu Chinese today namely Northern Wu, Southern Wu and Western Wu respectively.
The approximate regions are shown below.
The representative standard dialect of this language used to be Suzhou dialect but is now replaced by Shanghai dialect.
This language is now spoken in the big cities of Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shaoxing and Ningbo.
The Southern Song dynasty relocated its capital to Hangzhou (aka Lin-An) in 1127 AD after the Jurchen tribe who are ancestors of Manchu invaded northern China. These new migrants brought some influence on the local Hangzhou dialect.
This is a video of a few Northern Wu dialects.
Taizhou region which borders Lake Tai region was influenced by Tai-Hu language due to its proximity, therefore, it has more intelligibility with Tai-Hu compared to the other Southern Wu languages.
The Southern Wu languages were less influenced by the Eastern Jin dynasty influx than the Northern Wu languages. In other words, Southern Wu languages retained more vocabulary from proto-Wu language.
However, the phonology of Southern Wu languages is very similar to Northern Wu languages in that both branches have three way distinction of voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated e.g. (b,p,ph).
Due to its low intelligibility compared to the more well-known Chinese languages, Wenzhou dialect was infamously named "devil's language" and was used to confuse Japanese eavesdropper during World War Two.
The video below shows the different dialects of the Dong-Ou language.
The ancient cultural centers of ancient Wu speaking regions i.e. Suzhou, Wenzhou, Xuancheng became different branches of Wu Chinese today namely Northern Wu, Southern Wu and Western Wu respectively.
Northern Wu
The Northern Wu branch consists of only Tai-Hu (太湖) language with many mutually intelligible dialects. This branch grew out of the ancient dialect of proto-Suzhou which was the capital of ancient Wu-Yue state.The representative standard dialect of this language used to be Suzhou dialect but is now replaced by Shanghai dialect.
This language is now spoken in the big cities of Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shaoxing and Ningbo.
The Southern Song dynasty relocated its capital to Hangzhou (aka Lin-An) in 1127 AD after the Jurchen tribe who are ancestors of Manchu invaded northern China. These new migrants brought some influence on the local Hangzhou dialect.
This is a video of a few Northern Wu dialects.
Southern Wu
Unlike the Northern Wu branch, the Southern Wu branch consists of several partially mutually intelligible languages as follows. Each of these languages have their own dialects in parenthesis.- Dong-Ou 東甌 aka Ou-Jiang (Wenzhou 溫州, Rui-An 瑞安, Yueqing 樂清)
- Tai-Zhou 台州 (Taizhou city)
- Jin-Qu 金衢 (Jinhua 金華, Quzhou 衢州)
- Shang-Li 上麗 (Shangrao上饒, Lishui 麗水 )
Taizhou region which borders Lake Tai region was influenced by Tai-Hu language due to its proximity, therefore, it has more intelligibility with Tai-Hu compared to the other Southern Wu languages.
The Southern Wu languages were less influenced by the Eastern Jin dynasty influx than the Northern Wu languages. In other words, Southern Wu languages retained more vocabulary from proto-Wu language.
English
|
Shanghainese
|
Wenzhou
|
Thai
|
Low
|
Ti (低)
|
Tang
|
Tam
|
However, the phonology of Southern Wu languages is very similar to Northern Wu languages in that both branches have three way distinction of voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated e.g. (b,p,ph).
Due to its low intelligibility compared to the more well-known Chinese languages, Wenzhou dialect was infamously named "devil's language" and was used to confuse Japanese eavesdropper during World War Two.
The video below shows the different dialects of the Dong-Ou language.
Western Wu
The Western Wu branch consists of two partially mutually intelligible languages as follows. Each of these languages have their own dialects in parenthesis.- Xuan-Zhou 宣州 (Xuancheng 宣城)
- Hui-Zhou 徽州 (Huizhou city)
This branch grew out of the ancient dialect of proto-Xuancheng.
The Western Wu speaking region is much smaller than the other two branches and is under assault from migrants from neighbouring provinces.
Huizhou language is a Western Wu language which received considerable influence from Gan language in neighbouring Jiangxi province so much so that it has lost all its voiced initial consonants. Some Chinese linguists carved it out of Wu languages as a standalone mainly due to this change.
The video below shows the different dialects of Xuanzhou language.
The Western Wu speaking region is much smaller than the other two branches and is under assault from migrants from neighbouring provinces.
Huizhou language is a Western Wu language which received considerable influence from Gan language in neighbouring Jiangxi province so much so that it has lost all its voiced initial consonants. Some Chinese linguists carved it out of Wu languages as a standalone mainly due to this change.
The video below shows the different dialects of Xuanzhou language.
Features of Wu languages
The most distinguishing feature of Wu languages are that they have an extensive set of voiced initial consonants found in ancient Chinese languages but lost in most other Chinese languages.Here are a few examples in Suzhou dialect of different initial consonants with the vowel 'on' (with the exception of ɦ-h pair). This table uses IPA symbols and not Mandarin pinyin.
|
voiced |
example |
voiceless |
example |
voiceless aspirated |
example |
|
b |
蓬 |
p |
蹦 |
ph |
捧 |
|
d |
洞 |
t |
凍 |
th |
痛 |
|
g |
共 |
k |
公 |
kh |
空 |
|
dz |
從 |
ts |
中 |
tsh |
充 |
|
v |
逢 |
f |
風 |
||
|
z |
頌 |
s |
送 |
||
| ɦ |
話 |
h |
? |
Old Chinese phonology doesn't have the [f] and [v] initial consonants so this is closer to the phonology of Sui dynasty's Middle Chinese standard.
However, the final consonants have been reduced to just glottal stop 'h' and nasal 'n'. The reduction of final consonants is most probably due to the influence of Nanjing Mandarin dialect which also has the same set of final consonants. This reduction probably happened during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
In comparison, the regions that are much further away from the Mandarin region such as Cantonese, Hakka and Southern Min have a much larger set of final consonants.
Conclusion
The different Wu branches arose out of several different ancient cultural centers in the Wu-Yue speaking region.
The Nanjing cultural center above Tai-Hu region was originally a Wu-speaking region but a later event transformed it into a Mandarin-speaking region. The Mandarin-related articles in this blog will provide more details.
Related links
Sources
- https://www.itsfun.com.tw/%E5%90%B3%E8%AA%9E/wiki-8143493-5273573
- http://www.sophianzelou.net/life/linguistic-east-asian-history-ii-chinese-dialects/
- Wu online dictionary. http://wu-chinese.com/minidict/
- https://kknews.cc/history/r9pjo6v.html
- https://kknews.cc/history/xmjbe5g.html
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