Wu is a subdivision of Chinese, spoken by about 80 million people. It is spoken to southern Jiangsu and most of Zhejiang, an area sometimes referred to as Jiangnan. The historically wealthy Lower Yangtze Delta is home to the largest branch, Northern Wu, and is also the lect area that is represented on Wiktionary. Suzhounese (zh) was the cultural capital of the area, though due to Shanghai's relative economic status, Shanghainese (zh) has, to some extent, eclipsed Suzhounese's prestige status. Characteristically Wu varieties have voiced (濁/浊 (8zoq, “muddy”)) obstruents, and all except Oujiang varieties such as Wenzhounese have final glottal stops derived from the final stops of Middle Chinese. Together, these features reduce the number of tones that are actually distinctive or phonemic.
Although no official romanization system is endorsed by any government, on Wiktionary, both of these lects are notated in Wugniu, which is the most common standardised system used in online circles nowadays. Wugniu is also available in a wide variety of localities, and correspondences between different lects tend to have the same glyph (eg. Shanghainese /ɔ/ and Suzhounese /æ/ both being "au"). Slight modifications and extensions have been made regarding features not included in Wugniu officially, such as tone sandhi and erhua. The legacy Wiktionary romanization for Shanghainese and MiniDict romanizations are accessible in the expanded pronunciation infobox.
Left-prominent sandhi is notated with a dash in code (-
) and a space in display, whereas right-prominent sandhi is a plus (+
) in code but also a space in display. To separate two chains without RPS, an apersand (&
) is used.
The inputted tone left of the syllable is always the realized sandhi tone. This may not always correspond with the underlying tone, and one should consult Module:wuu-pron/data (for now) before adding entries. If the sandhi tone and underlying tone are the same, then the module would automatically put the first syllable's number in front of the syllable and all subsequent syllables' numbers behind their respective syllables. For instance:
1lau6 sy1
→ 1lau6-sy1Please also note that certain lects may have multiple types of directional sandhi or tone splits not accomodated for in the eight-numberal system. In those cases, a capital Latin letter is to be attatched behind the number to indicate the part of speech or tone category, eg. 3Atha
or 4Rbau
.
There is no unified orthography for Wu varieties that is widely adopted. On Wiktionary, in general, all terms are listed in both their etymological spelling and their phonetic spelling. There may be more than one phonetic page, but there is typically only one etymological page. The following is a reference list of common terms and Wiktionary-specific spellings.
Wugniu | Etymological | Phonetic |
---|---|---|
laq | 在 | 垃 |
la | 拉 | |
leq | 勒 | |
le | 來 | |
liq | 立 | |
li | 裡 | |
ke | 居 | 該 (蓋) |
ho | 許 / 化? | 化 |
he | 海 | |
hoq | 霍 | |
han | 夯 | |
hen | 亨 | |
laon | 丄 | 浪 |
gnian | 娘 | |
lau | 咾? | |
lu | 路 | |
taq | 𡍲 | 搭 |
teq | 得? | |
toq | 篤 | |
ta | 帶 | |
da | 埭 | |
taon | 當 | |
ton | 東 | |
don | 同 | |
tiq | 的 | |
te | 𡍲? | 對/堆 |
teq | 得 | |
ti | 底 | |
khaq | 許/居? | 客 |
kheq | 克 | |
(d)ze | 在 | 在 |
(d)zeq/tseq | 則 |
Wugniu | Etymological | Phonetic |
---|---|---|
ngu/vu/(w)u | 我 | 我 (-ou: 奴?) |
ngoq | 我? | |
ng | 吾/唔? | |
nge | ? | |
a(q) | 阿 | |
nga(q) | 𠊎? | |
ghaq | 狹? | |
an | 俺 | |
n(g) | 爾 | 爾 |
gni | 你 | |
ne | 倷 | |
yi(q) | 佢 | 夷† |
i(q) | 伊 | |
ji | 其? | |
g(e)i | 渠 | |
tha/tho | 他? | 他 |
da/do | 佗 | |
zeq- | 是 / 實? | |
ze- | ||
zian-/yan- | 像 | |
don- | ? | 動 |
weq- | ? | 活 |
li | 佢? | 俚 |
-la | ? | 拉 |
-le | 倈 | |
non | 儂 | 儂 |
-noq | 諾 | |
nou | 奴 | |
na | 爾拉 | 㑚 |
-da | 搭? | ? |
-daq | 達 | |
-taq | 搭 | |
-teq | 得 | |
-toq | 篤 | |
-men | 們 | |
-ten | 等 | |
-pae | 班 | |
-ko | 個? | |
-s(i)e(q) | 些 |
Definition | Wugniu | Etymological | Phonetic |
---|---|---|---|
~人 | ku | 個 | |
possessive | keq | 个/個 | 格/個? |
geq | 個? | ||
gheq | |||
deixis | keq | 箇 | 格 |
geq | 搿 |
zh-pron|w=sh:1thi ze;sz:1thie ze2
zh-pron|w=sh:5hu tsaon zan;sz:3hou tsaon5 zan2
zh-pron|w=sh:6di zy;sz:6die zyu6
zh-pron|w=sh:6ghoe koq;sz:2ghoe koq7
zh-pron|w=sh:7faq liq;sz:7faq liq8
zh-pron|w=sh:8zeq pen;sz:8zeq pen3
If unsure, hassle User:ND381 or User:Musetta6729.