i mentioned this before but i’m in the middle of writing up an article on wikipedia for the changzhou dialect of wu. i recently learned that wikipedia allegedly doesn’t allow original research, and since a bit of what i’m writing constitutes as such, i’m posting it here for when it gets deleted by some overzealous wikiphile. so far everything is either my own doing or, more often, taken from a book by the linguist and changzhou native Chao Yuen Ren who wrote a substantial essay on the topic which is available on google books. feel free to correct and add suggestions. if you’re looking at the wikipedia article and are wondering if i’m just copying it and taking credit, you’ll see the first edit and all subsequent edits at the time of this post are by my wikipedia alias, the one exception being an IP address of the computer i was using at the time.

anyway for those with whom i’ve spoken on the topic of wu i thought you might find this of some minor interest, though perhaps not enough interest to actually take you to wikipedia. i’ll keep this updated with the relevant information as i continue to update the wikipedia page. partly i think for all of the work it’s taking to transcribe and compile, i want something to show for it all that can’t be undone with all the ceremony and style contained within the impulsive flourish of a wikevangelist’s cursor. the following is duplicated on the wikipedia page and taken largely from the text listed at the bottom.


tones in changzhou hua were divided according to register by the Chinese-American linguist and Changzhou native Yuen Ren Chao. The high register includes the first, third, fourth and sixth tone with the second, fifth and seventh tone in the low register. they are as follows

tone sandhi
In the case of pairs of syllables have the stress on the second syllable, the only notable changes are the second syllable changing from (523) to (52) in the case of the fourth tone or from (13) to (11) with the second tone. everything else is as appears in the table.

update:
i’ve just finished converting the chart of changzhou consonants into IPA. i ended up reorganising it just a little but the content should be the same. the rime table is next up.

references
Chao, Yuen Ren (1976). Aspects of Chinese Sociolinguistics: Essays. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804709095.