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Wu (simplified Chinese: 吴语; traditional Chinese: 吳語; pinyin: Wúyǔ; Wugniu and IPA: 6 wu-gniu 6 [ɦu˩.nʲy˦] (Shanghainese), 2 ghou-gniu 6 [ɦou˨.nʲy˧] ()) is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang province, and parts of Jiangsu province, especially south of the Yangtze River, [2] which makes up the cultural region of Wu.
Wu (or Woo or Wou) is also the Cantonese transliteration of the Chinese surname 胡 (Mandarin Hu), used in Hong Kong, and by overseas Chinese of Cantonese-speaking areas of Guangdong, Guangxi, and/or Hong Kong/Macau origin.
Mandarin Chinese is the most popular dialect, and is used as a lingua franca across China. Linguists classify these varieties as the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family . Within this broad classification, there are between seven and fourteen dialect groups, depending on the classification.
Modern Mandarin wu (Cantonese mouh) continues a Middle Chinese mju or mjo. The Old Chinese reconstruction is uncertain, given as *m y wo or as *m y ag, [a] the presence of a final velar-g or -ɣ in Old Chinese being uncertain.
Conventional English-language usage in Chinese linguistics is to use dialect for the speech of a particular place (regardless of status), with regional groupings like Mandarin and Wu called dialect groups. [26] Other linguists choose to refer to the major groups as languages. [78]
The placement of objects in Wu dialects is somewhat variable, with Southern Wu varieties positioning the direct object before the indirect object, and Northern varieties (especially in the speech of younger people) favoring the indirect object before the direct object. Owing to Mandarin influence, [72] Shanghainese usually follows the latter model.
Mandarin Chinese is the prestige language in practice, and failure to protect ethnic languages does occur. In summer 2020, the Inner Mongolian government announced an education policy change to phase out Mongolian as the language of instructions for humanities in elementary and middle schools, adopting the national instruction material instead.
The earliest dialect of Nanjing was an ancient Wu dialect during the Eastern Jin. After the Wu Hu uprising, the Jin Emperor and many northern Chinese fled south, establishing the new capital Jiankang in what is modern day Nanjing. It was during this time that the ancient Wu of Nanjing was replaced by Jianghuai Mandarin.