Suzhou dialect

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Suzhou dialect (Simplified Chinese: 苏州话; Traditional Chinese: 蘇州話; pinyin: Sūzhōu huà) is a dialect of Wu, one of the subdivisions of Chinese spoken language. It is spoken in the city of Suzhou, in Jiangsu province of China.

It is typical of the Wu dialects, being rich in vowels and conservative in having many initials, and has many similarities with the Shanghai dialect.

1 Phonology
2 Romanization
3 See also

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Initials

Initials of Suzhou dialect
		bilabial	labio-dental	dental	alveolo-palatal	velar	glottal
nasal		m		n	ɲ	ŋ
plosives	voiced	b		d		g
	voiceless unaspirated	p		t		k	ʔ
	voiceless aspirated	pʰ		tʰ		kʰ
fricatives	voiced		v	z			ɦ
fricatives	voiceless		f	s	ɕ		h
affricates	voiced				dʑ
	voiceless unaspirated			ts	tɕ
	voiceless aspirated			tsʰ	tɕʰ
lateral approximants				l

Suzhou dialect has a set of voiced initials and exhibits unvoiced unaspirated and aspirated stops, there are unvoiced and voiced fricatives sets. Moreover, palatized initials also feature.

[edit] Rimes

Vowels	Diphthongs	Tripthongs	Nasals	Glottals
			m, n, ŋ, l
ɿ
ɥ
i	iø, io, iæ_ɐ, iɒ	iøʏ	in, ioŋ, iã, iɒ̃	ɪʔ(iəʔ), ioʔ, iaʔ, iɒʔ
y			yən	yɤʔ
u	uø, uE, uɒ		uən, uɒ̃, uã	uɤʔ, uaʔ
ɪ(iɪ)
ø	øʏ

o			oŋ	oʔ
	əu		ən	ɤʔ
E

æ_ɐ
			ã	aʔ
ɑ
ɒ			ɒ̃	ɒʔ

Suzhou has one tripthong rime, [ iøʏ ]. Unlike Shanghai, it has no nasalised rimes, although it does have a set of rimes which end in a nasal stop. Middle Chinese ru tone characters which end in [ -p -t -k ] end as a glottal stop [ -ʔ ] in Suzhou. Middle Chinese nasal endings [ -m ] have merged with rimes which end with [ -n ] in Suzhou. Middle Chinese [ -ŋ ] ending rimes have split into two types in Suzhou. Those which have a high fronted main vowel merge with [ -n ] ending rimes. Those which possess a palatising medial [ -i- ] and back main vowel, retain the [ -ŋ ] ending.