Wú

Wu is the Sinitic branch of the Jiangnan lowlands, spoken in Shanghai, Zhejiang and Jiangsu south of the Yangtze, the old lands of the Warring States of Wu and Yue. Han migrants arriving ahead of the fourth-century Upheaval of the Five Barbarians gave the local vernacular its shape, though it long differed from the court language of Jiankang.

When the Southern Song, 1127 to 1279, made Lin'an its capital, a second northern wave laid down the literary layer used in formal reading. Under the Yuan and Ming the language produced its own operatic traditions and vernacular texts.

Wu preserves the full set of Middle Chinese voiced initials and keeps the checked tone as a glottal stop. Its varieties, headed by the Suzhou dialect, were famed for their soft sound, celebrated in the idiom of the tender speech of Wu.