Wu Chinese

Wu Chinese is a big group of languages spoken mainly in the city of Shanghai, as well as in Zhejiang province and parts of Jiangsu province. These areas are found south of the Yangtze River and are known together as the Wu cultural region. People often call Wu Chinese "Shanghainese" when talking to those outside the region, especially when introducing it to foreigners.

In the past, the variety from Suzhou, called Suzhounese, was thought of as the most important form of Wu Chinese during the 1800s. But by the early 1900s, Shanghainese took over that role, especially as Shanghai grew and changed quickly.

Experts who study the history of languages think Wu Chinese is very special. It keeps sounds from very old Chinese that many other forms lost, and it also has its own special ways of building words and putting them together. One famous language expert, Chao Yuen Ren, grew up speaking a form of Wu Chinese from Changzhou. Because of how gentle and pleasant it sounds, Wu Chinese is often described as having "the tender speech of Wu."

Names

See also: Varieties of Chinese

Most people who speak Wu Chinese don't usually think of themselves as speaking "Wu." This name for their language is a newer idea used by language experts. It's more like saying someone speaks a "Romance language" instead of naming a specific one like Standard Mandarin or Hochdeutsch.

People usually just refer to their own local way of speaking, often by adding the word for "speech" to the name of their place. For example, people in Wenzhou call their language Wenzhou speech, shown as 溫州話. In some northern Wu areas, they might add the word for "chat" instead, like in Jiaxing where they say Jiaxing chat, written as 嘉興閒話.

There are several names used for the whole group of Wu languages:

• Wu language (吴语; 吳語; Wúyǔ), which is the formal name used in books about languages.
• Wu topolect (吴方言; 吳方言; Wú fāngyán), another common name that some people might see as less respectful.
• Wuyue language (吴越语; 吳越語; Wúyuèyǔ), a poetic name that connects the language to ancient cultures of the Wu and Yue states from a long time ago during the Warring States period.
  • Goetian, a name that comes from a Japanese way of saying Wuyue, is also sometimes used.
• Jiang–Zhe speech (江浙话; 江浙話; Jiāngzhè huà), a name meaning the speech from Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
• Jiangnan speech (江南话; 江南話; Jiāngnán huà), another name linking the language to the Jiangnan area. This is different from another language called Jiangbei speech, which is a type of Huai Chinese.

History

It is believed that Han Chinese peoples first arrived in 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, recording the exact pronunciations of many varieties for the first time. This was also when the economic boom of Shanghai happened, leading 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.

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.

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 落蘇 (Wugniu: 8loq-su "aubergine") are also shared between other Sinitic languages (eg. Teochew, Peng'im: lag8 sou1) as well as Kra-Dai languages (cf. Standard Zhuang lwggwz). 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.

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.

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.

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 (古江東方言), 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 (呉音; 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.

One prominent historical speaker of the medieval Wu language 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 Wu at Jiankang. It is also noted in the preface of the Qieyun, a Sui dynasty rime dictionary, that the speech of Wu, as well as that of Chu, is "at times too soft and light". 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, is believed to have been written in Suzhouenese. After the An Lushan rebellion, significant migration into the northern Wu-speaking areas occurred, which some believe created the north-south geographical divide we see today. Yongjianese [[zh]], a variety of Oujiang Wu, was first recorded during the Song dynasty. Yongjianese is the variety in which the Liushugu [[zh]] (六書故) by Dai Tong [[zh]] (戴侗, 1200-1285) is written. This treaty of calligraphy was published in 1320.

After the Jingkang incident, the imperial capital of the Song dynasty was moved from Bianjing (modern-day Kaifeng) to Lin'an (Hangzhou), starting the Southern Song period. This also coincided with a large migration wave mostly from the Heluo region, a strip of the Central Plains south of the Yellow River that roughly stretches from Luoyang to Kaifeng, which also brought a language that was not only phonologically and lexically different from the Wu Chinese of the time but also was syntactically and morphologically distinct. The Old Mandarin influence manifested in the form of the modern literary layer, as it was also the court language of the time. Coblin believes that this literary layer is also the origin of Huai Chinese.

Unlike the previous periods, the history of Wu Chinese after the Mongol conquest of China becomes much clearer because of the emergence of vernacular texts.

After the Mongol conquest of China, a period of relative stability followed, and vernacularism started being further embraced. This is evident in the fact that Chinese opera productions, including those of regions speaking either Northern or Southern Wu, started using their local varieties, rather than Classical Chinese, as had been the norm during and before the Song dynasty.

The Tō-on (唐音; Hepburn: tō-on; Pinyin: Tángyīn) pronunciations introduced during the Japanese Kamakura period were largely rooted in the vernacular of northern Zhejiang at around the end of the Song dynasty or start of the Yuan dynasty, despite what its name may suggest. Analyses on texts of the time reveal stark phonetic differences between the Wu of today and that of the 13th century.

The Ming dynasty saw continued development of local operas, such as Suzhou pingtan, and more vernacular texts being written. In particular, the contemporary Classic Chinese Novels, such as Water Margin, are believed to have significant lexical and syntactic influence from Hangzhounese.

The Yuan-Ming transition saw a tremendous loss of life in the Jianghuai area because of events such as the Red Turban Rebellions. The Hongwu Emperor ordered for people from Jiangnan, primarily in Suzhou, Songjiang, Jiaxing, Hangzhou, and other Northern Wu-speaking areas, to resettle the now depopulated areas in modern central Jiangsu. More migration happened several decades later to avoid wokou pirates. These migrations are believed to have contributed to the Wu-like features in western Huai Chinese groups, such as Tongtai.

Dialectal differences were not as obvious in textual sources until Ming times, and thus regional linguistic distinctions were seen in media only after the fall of the Yuan. These differences are largely found in musical sources such as historical folk songs and tanci (a kind of ballad or lyric poem). For instance, the Shange (山歌; Shāngē; 'Mountain songs'), a collection of folk songs gathered during the Ming dynasty by Feng Menglong in southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, where Northern Wu is today spoken, shows clear signs of modern Wu Chinese in its lexicon. Other Ming documents that are either written in Wu or contain parts where Wu is used include:

• Sanyan (三言), a trilogy of collected stories also compiled by Feng Menglong
• Erpai (二拍), two short story collections by Ling Mengchu
• Xingshiyan (型世言), a novella recorded by Lu Renlong (陸人龍)
• Huanshaji (浣紗記), an opera by Liang Chenyu (梁辰魚)
• Mo Hanzhai Dingben Chuanqi (墨憨齋定本傳奇), by Feng Menglong
• Guzhang Juechen (鼓掌絕塵), a late Ming novel collection
• Bozhonglian (缽中蓮), written by an unknown author

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 varieties. They do contain many of the unique features in its vocabulary present in contemporary Wu, such as pronouns, but clearly indicate that not all of the earlier unique features of these Wu varieties were carried into present varieties. 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.

A 16th century text called the Wenqiji (問奇集; 問奇集; Wènqíjí) includes a chapter called Gedi Xiangyin (各地鄉音) that records the local pronunciations of terms in various areas. Unlike the Qieyun preface, it separates the early Southwestern Mandarin of Huguang, ie. that of Chu, from Wu Chinese. The chapter records typical features of modern Wu, such as:

• the /ŋ/ coda in the term 打; 'to strike' (打為黨)
• the loss of the final glide in terms such as 解; 'to untie' (解為嫁)
• the apical rime -yu_ (Wugniu) (豬為知)
• the voicing (potentially even the breathy voice or "murmur" that Northern Wu is famous for) of historically voiced initials (辰為人, 范為萬, etc.)

Texts in the early Qing dynasty remained much the same as that of the Ming dynasty. Works of the time include the Qingzhongpu and Doupeng xianhua, an early Qing baihua novel. During the 18th century, significant lexical shifts away from that seen in Shange took place; many sources we have of the period are operatic in nature. Representative works from this section include the operas (especially kunqu operas) by Qian Decang (錢德蒼) in the collection Zhuibaiqiu (綴白裘), and the legends written by Shen Qifeng [[zh]] or what are known as Shenshi Sizhong (沈氏四種), as well as huge numbers of tanci (彈詞) ballads.

From the late Qing period to Republican China (the 19th and early 20th centuries), long-form vernacular novels (蘇白小說 or 吳語小說) such as The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai (海上花列傳) and The Nine-tailed Turtle (九尾龜) started appearing. Both above examples are pornographic in nature. Other works include:

• Haitian Hongxue Ji (海天鴻雪記)
• The Nine-tailed Fox (九尾狐)
• Officialdom Unmasked (官場現形記)
• Wuge Jiaji (吳哥甲集)
• He Dian (何典)

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 Xiantan (負曝閒談). Works in this period also saw an explosion of new vocabulary in Wu varieties to describe their changing world. This clearly reflects the great social changes which were occurring during the time.

At the same time, missionary Joseph Edkins gathered large amounts of data and published several educational works on Shanghainese, as well as Bibles in a few major Wu varieties, including Southern Wu varieties such as Jinhuanese and Wenzhounese.

After the Taiping Rebellion, many migrants from Mandarin-speaking areas migrated into the Wu-speaking area. Xuanzhou Wu therefore significantly receded, which is reflected in the fact that it is now spoken only in the mountainous highlands of southern Anhui. Some territorial changes and stratification occurred, primarily near the Yangtze River. The newly-arrived Huai Chinese varieties have been slowly overtaking the suburban and rural Wu varieties. For instance, in Lishui county, Nanjing prefecture, the Huai variety was confined inside the town itself until the 1960s; it is now overtaking the Wu variety even in rural areas.

Several important proponents of vernacular Chinese in official use, such as Lu Xun and Chao Yuen Ren, were speakers of Northern Wu varieties, in this case Shaoxingese and Changzhounese respectively. Wenzhounese was used during the Second World War to avoid Japanese interception.

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. Curiously, Wenzhounese was used again during the Vietnam War to avoid enemy comprehensibility. Wu varieties were gradually excluded from most modern media and schools. 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 certain Mandarin promotion measures, promotion and regularization of Wu languages became improbable and left them more prone to Mandarinization. In 1992, students in Shanghai were banned from speaking Shanghainese at all times on campuses. As of now, Wu has no official status, no legal protection and there is no officially sanctioned romanization.

It is not uncommon to encounter children who grew up with a regional variant of Mandarin as their parent tongue with little or no fluency in a Wu variety at all. This led to a step up in the preservation and documentation of Wu Chinese, with the first major attempt being the Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects, which surveyed 2,791 locations across the nation, including 121 Wu locations (an increase from the two locations in PKU's earlier surveys). This also led to the formation of an elaborate database including digital recordings of all locations, however, this database is not available to the general public. The atlas's editor, Cao Zhiyun, considers many of these languages "endangered" and has introduced the term 濒危方言 ('languages in danger' or 'endangered local languages') to raise people's attention to the issue, although major international databases, such as Glottolog and Ethnologue, do not share similar sentiments.

Although more TV programs are appearing in Wu varieties, they are no longer permitted to air during primetime. They are generally more playful than serious and many of these shows, such as Hangzhou's "阿六頭説新聞" ("Old Liutou tells you the news"), provide local or regional news in the variety, 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 varieties, most of which are regional TV shows, although some are user-created songs and the like. A number of books are also appearing to teach people how to speak Wu varieties such as Suzhouenese and Shanghainese, the latter of which even having international titles.

Today, popular support for the preservation of Wu languages is very strong, while feature-length movies such as B for Busy and highly successful TV shows such as Blossoms Shanghai have been filmed in Wu varieties (in both aforementioned cases, Shanghainese). It is now not uncommon to see advertisements and billboards, as well as government media, using Wu Chinese written in non-ad hoc orthographies.

Classification

Wu Chinese is a group of languages mainly spoken in Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu. It is different from other Chinese languages like Mandarin or Cantonese. People have been studying how to group these languages since 1937.

Wu Chinese is split into two main groups: Northern Wu and Southern Wu. These groups are very different, and people who speak one usually cannot understand the other easily. There is also a smaller group called Western Wu, which is quite unique because it has been influenced by surrounding Mandarin languages. The Southern Wu group is especially diverse, with many different varieties that don’t understand each other well.

Phonology

See also: Northern Wu phonology

Wu varieties have more sounds than many other Chinese languages. They also have complex tone systems that change depending on the words around them. The sounds in Wu languages vary a lot, so it's hard to describe them all simply.

In terms of consonants, Wu languages often have more at the start of words than at the end. The endings usually only allow two specific consonant sounds. Some Wu varieties may add or change these endings.

Wu languages also have many vowel sounds, similar to some European languages. For example, the variety spoken in Shanghai's Fengxian District has around 20 different vowel sounds. This large number of vowels comes from unique sound changes in the language.

Wu varieties also use special voice qualities in their tones, such as breathy and creaky voices, which affect how words sound.

Tones

Wu varieties usually have 7 to 8 tones, but some can have as few as 5 or as many as 12. These tones can change based on the words they are used with, a feature called tone sandhi. This happens in words made of multiple parts, in certain word pairs, and with small words that add meaning to sentences.

The tone sandhi in Wu can change depending on the type of words used together. Some Wu languages change the tone of the word on the right, while others change the tone of the word on the left. Both types can be found in Wu languages.

Grammar

The grammar of Wu languages is mostly like Standard Chinese, but there are some interesting differences. For example, Wu languages use special phrases to connect verbs and objects.

Like other Chinese languages, Wu uses words called classifiers and adds particles to the end of sentences. The usual word order in Wu is subject-verb-object, but sometimes it changes to put important ideas at the front of the sentence. This happens more often in Wu than in other Chinese languages.

Wu languages also use repeated words more often than Standard Chinese. They can repeat verbs to show commands or finished actions. Some words change their sound depending on the sentence, which is different from Standard Chinese.

Vocabulary

For more terms, refer to the Wu Swadesh lists on Wiktionary.

Wu Chinese has its own special words and ways of speaking. It shares many words with other Chinese languages but also has unique ones. Some of these words come from very old Chinese, like from the time of the Southern Song dynasty.

Wu Chinese includes special words for family members, things, and actions. For example, it has its own words for "mother," "to wash," and "to tie." Many of these words are also used in a dialect called Hangzhounese.

Because Shanghai was a busy port, Wu Chinese picked up words from other languages, especially English and French. Some of these words, like "chocolate" and "sofa," are now used in many Chinese languages.

Wu Chinese also has two ways to say many words: one for reading and writing, and another for everyday speaking. This happened when old court leaders brought new sounds to the area during the Southern Song dynasty. For example, the word for "horse" can sound different depending on whether you are reading or talking with friends.

Orthography

Wu Chinese is mainly written using Chinese characters. Because most speakers live in the People's Republic of China, they often use Simplified Chinese characters. People sometimes use words that sound right instead of knowing their exact history, but books like the Great Dictionary of Shanghainese help decide the best way to write things, especially in government messages.

Romanization

Main article: Romanization of Wu Chinese

Wu Chinese does not have an official way to write it using only letters. Many people use a version of Hanyu Pinyin because it is familiar to Wu Chinese speakers. Online groups like Wu-Chinese and Wugniu have made their own systems to write Wu Chinese with letters, using old books from the 19th and 20th centuries as guides.

Literature

The Wu dialect first appeared in literature during the Ming dynasty in types of opera and song. By the early 1900s, it was used in some novels, often in the conversations of certain characters. One famous book, Shanghai Flowers by Han Bangqing, had all its dialogue in Wu.

Even though Wu was used in some popular books at the time, its use in writing didn't last long. By 1910, Wu's role in literature began to fade, partly because other forms of Chinese writing became more important and popular.