Taihu Wu (吳語太湖片) or Northern Wu (北部吳語) is a Wu Chinese language spoken in much of the southern part of the province of Jiangsu, including Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, the southern part of Nantong, Jingjiang and Danyang; the municipality of Shanghai; and the northern part of Zhejiang province, including Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Ningbo, Huzhou, and Jiaxing. A notable exception is the dialect of the town of Jinxiang, which is a linguistic exclave of Taihu Wu in Zhenan Min-speaking Cangnan county of Wenzhou prefecture in Zhejiang province. Speakers in regions around Taihu Lake and Hangzhou Bay, are the largest population among all Wu speakers. Taihu Wu dialects such as Shanghainese, Shaoxing and Ningbo are mutually intelligible even for L2 Taihu speakers.
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Northern Wu in the context of Wu Chinese
Wu (simplified Chinese: 吴语; traditional Chinese: 吳語; pinyin: Wúyǔ; Wugniu and IPA:wu-gniu6 [ɦu˩.nʲy˦] (Shanghainese), ghou-gniu6 [ɦou˨.nʲy˧] (Suzhounese)) is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang province, and parts of Jiangsu province, especially south of the Yangtze River, which makes up the cultural region of Wu. The Wu languages are at times simply called Shanghainese, especially when introduced to foreigners. The Suzhounese variety was the prestige dialect of Wu as of the 19th century, but had been replaced in status by Shanghainese by the turn of the 20th century, coinciding with a period of rapid language change in the city. The languages of Northern Wu constitute a language family and are mutually intelligible, while those of Southern Wu do not form a phylogenetic language family and are not mutually intelligible.
Historical linguists view Wu of great significance because of its obviously distinct nature. The Wu languages typically preserve all voiced initials of medieval Chinese, as well as the checked tone in the form of a glottal stop. Wu varieties also have noticeably unique morphological and syntactic innovations, as well as lexicon exclusively found in the Wu grouping. It is also of note that the influential linguist Chao Yuen Ren was a native speaker of Changzhounese, a variety of Northern Wu. The Wu varieties, especially that of Suzhou, are traditionally perceived as soft in the ears of speakers of both Wu and non-Wu languages, leading to the idiom "the tender speech of Wu" (吴侬软语; 吳儂軟語).
Northern Wu in the context of Changzhou dialect
Changzhounese (simplified Chinese: 常州话; traditional Chinese: 常州話; IPA: [z̥ɑŋ.tsei.ɦu] (pronunciation in Changzhounese)) is a variety of Wu Chinese, a Sino-Tibetan language family. It is spoken in and around the prefectural centre of Changzhou, Jiangsu. Being a Northern Wu variety, it shares many similarities with the Shanghainese and Suzhounese. It is not at all mutually intelligible with Mandarin, China's official language. It is much more closely related to the neighboring variety in Wuxi with which it is mostly mutually intelligible.
Phonetically, Changzhounese makes use of a number of voiced (or slack voiced) initials, namely [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊ d̥z̥ d̥ʑ̊ v̥ z̥ ɦ̥], that are not found in Mandarin as well as a larger number of vowel sounds, namely [ɑ ɐ ɔ o æ ə ɨ ɨʷ ɛ ɤɯ e i u y]. The tone system also is of greater complexity, using 7 tones based on traditional analyses. It also has a more complex tone sandhi than that of most other Chinese varieties.