Wu Chinese

Spoken in

  • Sino - Tibetan languages Sinitic languages Wu

Zh (Chinese Language )

Wuu, zho ( macro language, Chinese languages)

Wu (Chinese吴语/吴语pinyin Wúyǔ ) is a Chinese language, which is spoken in the People's Republic of China at the mouth of the Yangtze River around. Wu is spoken by about 77 million people. Together with the other Chinese languages ​​Chinese writing is used as a written language.

Chinese linguists and most Western sinologist and linguist consider Wu as a group of dialects (方言Fangyan ) the Chinese language. As representative members of this group the dialects of Suzhou and Wenzhou are used in the rule.

Another well-known Wu dialect is Shanghaiisch, which is more difficult to analyze due to the immigration of speakers of other dialects of particular historical- phonological point of view than other Wu dialects.

Linguistic geography

The Wu dialects are spoken mainly in Zhejiang, Shanghai and Jiangsu.

The Wu dialects are usually divided into six zones:

  • Taihu太湖: South Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang; including the dialects of Shanghai, Suzhou, Changzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Shaoxing.
  • Taizhou台州( in Zhejiang)
  • Dong'ou东 瓯: Wenzhou ( Zhejiang)
  • Wuzhou婺 州: in and around Jinhua ( Zhejiang)
  • Chùqú处 衢: in and around Lishui and Quzhou ( Zhejiang)
  • Xuanzhou宣州: in and around Xuancheng ( Anhui )

Phonology

The most Wu dialects have preserved the three rows of plosives from the Middle Chinese - voiceless non -aspirated, voiceless aspirated, voiced ( such as p, p ʰ, b ) -, while most other dialects have no voiced plosives more. The most Wu dialects have seven or eight tones; the dialect of Shanghai with only five tones is a significant exception.

Vocabulary

Grammatical auxiliary words ( particles and suffixes ) are very different from standard Chinese. The order of morphemes in the word education is often reversed as compared to the standard Chinese. A striking feature of the Wu dialects is the use of the personal pronoun侬for the second person singular.

Grammar

In the Wu dialects, there is a tendency to word order subject-object - verb.

Language family Taizhou (Zhejiang)
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