Wú (simplified Chinese: 吴语; traditional Chinese: 吳語; pinyin: Wú yǔ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese languages. It is spoken in most of Zhejiang province, the municipality of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province, as well as smaller parts of Anhui, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces. Major Wu dialects include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Yongkang, and Quzhou. The traditional prestige dialect of Wu is the Su...
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Wú (simplified Chinese: 吴语; traditional Chinese: 吳語; pinyin: Wú yǔ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese languages. It is spoken in most of Zhejiang province, the municipality of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province, as well as smaller parts of Anhui, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces. Major Wu dialects include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Yongkang, and Quzhou. The traditional prestige dialect of Wu is the Suzhou dialect, though due to its large population, Shanghainese is today sometimes considered the prestige dialect.
As of 1991, there are at least 77 million speakers of Wu Chinese, which makes it the 10th most populous language in the world.
Among speakers of other Chinese languages, Wu is often subjectively judged to be soft, light, and flowing. There is even a special term used to describe these qualities of Wu speech (simplified Chinese: 吴侬软语; traditional Chinese: 吳儂軟語; pinyin: wúnóngruǎnyǔ). The actual source of this impression is harder...
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