Shanghainese in the context of "Wonton"

Chinese (spoken: simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ, written: 中文; Zhōngwén) is an umbrella term for Sinitic languages in the Sino-Tibetan language family, widely recognized as a group of language varieties, spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak one of the Chinese languages as their first language.

The Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The Chinese government considers the spoken varieties of the Chinese languages dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are considered to be separate languages in a family by linguists. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g., Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e.g., Shanghainese), and Yue (68 million, e.g., Cantonese). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with the other varieties within the same branch (e.g., Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin, Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin, Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan. All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic.

A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch (linguistic tone) rather than by volume or length, as in some other languages like English. Pitch-accent languages also contrast with fully tonal languages like Vietnamese, Thai and Standard Chinese, in which practically every syllable can have an independent tone. Some scholars have claimed that the term "pitch accent" is not coherently defined and that pitch-accent languages are a sub-category of tonal languages in general.

Languages that have been described as pitch-accent languages include: most dialects of Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Baltic languages, Ancient Greek, Vedic Sanskrit, Tlingit, Turkish, Japanese, Limburgish, Norwegian, Swedish of Sweden, Western Basque, Yaqui, certain dialects of Korean, Shanghainese, and Livonian.

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).

Eriocheir sinensis, the Chinese mitten crab (simplified Chinese: 大闸蟹; traditional Chinese: 大閘蟹; pinyin: dàzháxiè; Jyutping: daai6 zaap6 haai5; Shanghainese: du-zaq-ha, lit. "big sluice crab"; Korean: 참게) or Shanghai hairy crab (上海毛蟹, p Shànghǎi máoxiè), is a medium-sized burrowing crab that is named for its furry claws, which resemble mittens. It is native to rivers, estuaries, and other coastal habitats of East Asia; from Korea in the north to Fujian in the south. It has also been introduced to Europe and North America, where it is considered an invasive species. The species features on the list of invasive alien species of Union concern. This means that the import of the species and trade in the species is forbidden in the whole of the European Union.

Hengsha (横沙岛, Shanghainese: Waan So Tau) is a low-lying alluvial island at the mouth of the Yangtze River in eastern China. Together with the islands of Chongming and Changxing, it forms Chongming District, the northernmost area of the provincial-level municipality of Shanghai. Its population was 33,400 in 2008.

Wu Chinese has four major schools of romanization.

The most popular school, Common Wu Pinyin (通用吴语拼音), was developed by amateur language clubs and local learners. There are two competing schemes; both adhere to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and are very similar to each other. The initial scheme was "Wu Chinese Society pinyin" (吴语协会拼音, developed around 2005), and it formed the basis of "Wugniu pinyin" (吴语学堂拼音, around 2016). Wu Chinese Society pinyin in general does not mark tones. The name Wugniu comes from the Shanghainese pronunciation of 吴语. Either of them is the default romanization scheme in most learning materials.

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.

Old Xiang, also known as Lou-Shao (simplified Chinese: 娄邵片; traditional Chinese: 婁邵片; pinyin: Lóu Shào piàn; lit. 'Loudi and Shaoshan subgroup'), is a conservative Xiang Chinese language. It is spoken in the central areas of Hunan where it has been to some extent isolated from the neighboring Chinese languages, Southwestern Mandarin and Gan languages, and it retains the voiced plosives of Middle Chinese, which are otherwise only preserved in Wu languages like Shanghainese. See Shuangfeng dialect for details. Mao Zedong was a speaker of Old Xiang with his native Shaoshan dialect.