Suzhou dialect - Definition and Overview

Suzhou dialect (蘇州話; pinyin: su zhou hua) is a dialect of Wu, one of the subdivisions of Chinese spoken language. It is spoken in the city of Suzhou, in Jiangsu province of China.

It is typical of the Wu dialects, being rich in vowels and conservative in having many initials, and has many similarities with the Shanghai dialect.

Phonology

Initials

Suzhou dialect has a set of voiced initials and exhibits unvoiced unaspirated and aspirated stops, there are unvoiced and voiced fricatives sets. Moreover, palatized initials also feature.

Rimes

Suzhou has one tripthong rime, [ iøy ]. Unlike Shanghai, it has no nasalised rimes, although it does have a set of rimes which end in a nasal stop. Middle Chinese ru tone characters which end in [ -p -t -k ] end as a glottal stop [ -ʔ ] in Suzhou. Middle Chinese nasal endings [ -m ] have merged with rimes which end with [ -n ] in Suzhou. Middle Chinese [ -ŋ ] ending rimes have split into two types in Suzhou. Those which have a high fronted main vowel merge with [ -n ] ending rimes. Those which possess a palatising medial [ -i- ] and back main vowel, retain the [ -ŋ ] ending.

Tones

In Suzhou, part of the Middle Chinese Shang tone characters has merged with the modern yin qu tone.

See also

• List of Chinese dialects