It’s come up a few times in the last couple months so it seemed as good a time as any to run a quick outline. We’ll file this somewhere between “arbitrary rules that no one follows” and “totally irrelevant pieces of information”.
In written Wu, and this is strictly a writing issue, there are a number of possible characters used to negate verbs. In Mandarin it’s pretty much 不 and 不 alone. 没 doesn’t count here since that’s really more an equivalent of 文言’s wèi 未 (”to have not [done s.t.]“). Look at E.G. Pulleyblank’s grammar on Classical Chinese or Li and Thompson’s “Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar” (page 415) for more on either of those. Since this is neither a Mandarin blog nor a 文言 blog, we’ll just move along.
The basic characters you’re going to see are: 不, though it’s probably the least common of the bunch, 勿 which tends to be the most common, 弗 which I use almost exclusively, and 佛 which is actually Buddha and something I’ve only ever encountered online in BBSs and blogs. I’ve also seen another character, 拂, which is the word of choice for the Wu version Wikipedia. I hate it. It’s just as bad as 佛. The main difference is that it, just like 弗, is “fú” in Mandarin. I normally defer to the Wukipedia on these sorts of things, since the articles/stubs are written by native speakers, but in this case I think I have to reject it outright.
佛 shouldn’t be used. The sound is ok for some dialects, but it’s also a pretty common character otherwise and has a fairly unambiguous meaning. The other three all really do mean “no” and so people really ought to stick to those.
不 I also don’t recommend. It’s my opinion that one of the features of writing Wu ought to be an immediate recognition that we’re not reading Mandarin. Therefore I think in any case where there’s a commonly used alternative for certain words, they should be used. I tend to use 吾 for 我 for that reason alone.
勿 and 弗 could both work just as easily. The benefit of 勿 is it’s more common and so everyone will immediately get the meaning without necessarily thinking it’s Mandarin. 弗 on the other hand has the advantage of sound. In every Wu dialect in which I know the word for 不, they all start with something like [f].
Between those two it ultimately comes down to taste. There is one more point on the side of 勿, which is its use in characters marking contractions such as 覅 fiào, a contraction for 勿要.
For those interested, pronunciation is as follows for the Shanghai dialect: 弗，佛 and 勿 are all [və˩˨], entering tone. 不 is pronounced [pə˧˧] and 覅 is [viɔ˨˧].
好好学习，天天向上。
hɔ hɔ ɦo ʑiɪ, tʰi tʰi ɕiɑ̃ zɑ̃.
edit: I forgot 伐 which is also fairly common online.
Nice post. Personally, I prefer 勿, and I think that’s probably because Chinese has trained me to think of W and V as very similar sounds. It just makes sense to me.
Thanks. It’s not my most substantive post but it’s something that’s come up a bit lately.
I think the main reason I use 弗 as much as I do is because my real beginning education in Wu was further west, where they say [fə] or just [f]. I think had I started in Shanghai I’d be more inclined toward 勿. Though given 覅 is with 勿 it may be time to switch.
Whoa, I had never seen 覅 (or at least don’t remember seeing it)!
Nice find. And yeah, I think that clinches it…
(Apologies for posting on such an old post)
Which character is the cognate for Shanghainese [və˩˨]? For that matter, is 我 or 吾 the cognate of Shanghainese [ŋu]? I could see either, as they both have initial w which often corresponds to initial ŋ.
Peter,
我 or 吾 could work. I see 吾 written a bit, but 我 almost as often.
For [və˩˨], it’s usually written as 口+伐 or 勿. In truth the actual character could be any of the ones listed above.
Some interesting tidbits from Norman:
我 (MC ngâ) is the precursor to both Mandarin’s and Wu’s 1st person sing. pronoun. 吾 (MC ngo) fell out of use a long time ago as the grammar was getting simpler (of course, people sure kept it up in writing) and probably isn’t the precursor to anything in any dialect.
Wu’s 2nd person sing. pronoun is mysterious!
Wu’s 3rd person sing. pronoun comes from 伊 (MC ‘i), which originally meant “this” (or something like that–I’m sure no expert on 文言文) but came to mean “he/she”.
Wu’s general negation marker is a reflex of 不. Wu’s “not yet” (often 还没有 in Mandarin, 未 in more classical forms) is a reflex of 不曾.
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Although I generally think it’s a good idea to write Wu (or other Chinese dialects) using the cognate characters, I’m not at all suggesting doing that for grammatical words (whose etymology is totally opaque to the average speaker). I was just curious about where Wu’s pronouns and whatnot came from. Hope you find it interesting.
P.S. I think 吾 and 勿 are pretty awesome choices. They clearly distinguish it as being non-Mandarin while still meaning the same thing. What do people use for the “not yet” thing I mentioned?