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Wu Chinese: The Family Shanghainese Belongs To

Wu is one of the major Chinese language groups. Where Shanghainese sits inside it, which neighbours it resembles, and how far intelligibility reaches.

By Published 4 min read

Reign Creative LLC makes Learn Shanghainese Wu Chinese, which this article links to, so we have a commercial interest in it. How we write and check articles.

Key takeaways

  • Wu is a major group of Chinese languages spoken around Shanghai, Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu, and Shanghainese is one variety within it.
  • Northern Wu varieties are mutually intelligible with one another; Southern Wu varieties such as Wenzhounese are not intelligible with Northern Wu.
  • Suzhounese was the prestige variety of Wu in the 19th century and was displaced by Shanghainese around the turn of the 20th.
  • Shanghainese absorbed heavy influence from Ningbo and Jianghuai migration after the port opened in the 1850s, and changed quickly as a result.
  • A Shanghainese course is useful in Suzhou and Ningbo up to a point, and that point is honest to state rather than to blur.

Shanghainese is a Wu variety, not the Wu language. Wu is a major group of Chinese languages spoken around Shanghai, across Zhejiang, and in the parts of Jiangsu south of the Yangtze — the Wu cultural region. Shanghainese is one variety inside it, and the reason it stands in for the whole group in outsiders' minds is a story about a port rather than about linguistics.

Getting the geography right matters if you are learning, because it is the only honest way to answer the question learners actually ask: where will this work?

The internal split that undoes the simple picture

The most important thing to know about Wu is that it is not one speech community.

Northern Wu varieties constitute a family that is mutually intelligible internally. Shanghainese sits here, alongside Suzhounese, Huzhounese and their neighbours. Some linguists group Shanghainese with Suzhounese and Huzhounese specifically, into a subbranch defined by shared phonological, lexical and grammatical features.

Southern Wu is different, and the difference is not one of degree. Southern Wu varieties do not form a phylogenetic family and are not mutually intelligible with each other. Wenzhounese, the best known of them, is not mutually intelligible with Northern Wu at all.

So "Wu" as a label tells you about descent, not about whether you will be understood. A learner who reasons "Wenzhounese is Wu, Shanghainese is Wu, therefore my Shanghainese will get me by in Wenzhou" has made a reasonable inference from a misleading label. The same trap catches people who assume all of Chinese is one continuum — is Shanghainese a dialect goes into why the vocabulary of classification keeps producing these errors.

How Shanghainese displaced Suzhounese

For most of recorded Wu history, the prestige variety was not Shanghainese. Suzhounese was the prestige dialect of Wu as of the 19th century, and it was replaced in status by Shanghainese around the turn of the 20th.

What changed was the city. The port of Shanghai opened in the 1850s and a large number of migrants arrived, particularly from Ningbo and the Jianghuai area. Missionaries including Joseph Edkins documented the phonology during the same period, which is why Shanghainese has an unusually well-attested 19th-century record for a Chinese regional variety.

The result was heavy loaning — from Ningbo speech, from other Wu varieties, later from English, in a pattern that parallels Cantonese in Hong Kong. Speakers of other Wu varieties have historically been rude about this, treating the Shanghai vernacular as a mixture of Suzhou and Ningbo speech rather than a thing in its own right.

The mixture is also why Shanghainese changed fast. It grew through the Republican era, peaking in the 1930s as migrants arrived and adopted the local language, and it kept changing: the Shanghainese spoken by young people in the city today differs noticeably from that of the older population, with Mandarin frequently inserted into conversation.

Where Wu is spoken

Broadly: Shanghai, Zhejiang province, southern Jiangsu, and parts of eastern Nantong. Shanghainese proper constitutes the Shanghai subranch of the Northern Wu family, and it can be subdivided further on the basis of which historical tone categories a given local variety has preserved.

There are Wu speakers well outside that region too. Migrants from Shanghai carried the language into overseas Chinese communities, and as of 2016 some 83,400 people in Hong Kong were recorded as still able to speak Shanghainese.

Why our course is named for Shanghainese, not Wu

Learn Shanghainese Wu Chinese puts both terms in the name, and the ordering is not accidental. It teaches Shanghainese specifically, and says "Wu Chinese" to signal the family rather than to claim coverage of it.

That distinction became a real question once the course was out. Learners from Suzhou and Ningbo — people with family ties to those cities, mostly — asked whether it would work for them.

The honest answer we settled on, and the one the course materials give, is: partly, and more for Suzhou than for Wenzhou, and it is not a Suzhou course.

Northern Wu varieties are mutually intelligible, so a Suzhou learner using our material will follow it, will recognise most of the vocabulary, and will end up speaking Shanghainese rather than Suzhounese. For someone reconnecting with Suzhou-speaking family, that is a partial win: they will be understood, and they will not sound like home. For someone from Wenzhou it is close to no use at all, because Southern Wu is a different intelligibility group.

We could have blurred that. A vaguer scope line — "a Wu Chinese course" — would have made the app look relevant to more people, and nobody would have filed a complaint, because a Suzhou learner who ends up speaking Shanghainese still ends up able to talk to their relatives.

We wrote the narrow version instead, because the alternative quietly wastes the time of the Wenzhou learner who downloads it on the strength of the word Wu. A scope line that is only accurate for the customers it attracts is not a scope line.

What the course does offer a Northern Wu learner outside Shanghai is a starting point in a space with very little else in it, plus the honest note that the variety taught is the Shanghai one. If you want the practical route into that variety, learning Shanghainese for beginners sets it out, and the rest of the studio's language work is under language learning.

Good to know

Frequently asked questions

What is Wu Chinese?
Wu is one of the major groups of Chinese languages, spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang province and the parts of Jiangsu south of the Yangtze — the region sometimes described as the Wu cultural area. Shanghainese is the best known variety, to the point that Wu is sometimes simply called Shanghainese when introduced to outsiders, which is inaccurate but understandable.
Is Suzhounese the same as Shanghainese?
No, but they are close relatives. Both belong to Northern Wu, and Northern Wu varieties are mutually intelligible with one another. Some linguists group Shanghainese with Suzhounese and Huzhounese into a subbranch on the basis of shared phonological, lexical and grammatical features. A Shanghainese speaker and a Suzhou speaker can converse; they are not speaking the same variety.
Why is Shanghainese the best known Wu variety?
Because of what happened to Shanghai. Suzhounese was the prestige variety of Wu as of the 19th century and was replaced in status by Shanghainese around the turn of the 20th, coinciding with rapid language change in the city after the port opened in the 1850s and large numbers of migrants arrived, particularly from Ningbo and the Jianghuai region.
Can I use Shanghainese in Hangzhou or Wenzhou?
Hangzhou sits in the Wu region and your Shanghainese will be worth something there. Wenzhou is a different matter: Wenzhounese is a Southern Wu variety and is not mutually intelligible with Northern Wu. The Wu label covers both, which is exactly why it is a poor guide to whether you will be understood.

Sources

  1. Wu Chinese (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
  2. Shanghainese (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
  3. Northern Wu (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed

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