Wenzhounese

E321130

Wenzhounese is a highly distinctive and notoriously difficult-to-understand variety of Wu Chinese spoken in and around Wenzhou in southeastern Zhejiang province.

All labels observed (3)

Label Occurrences
Wenzhounese canonical 3
Wenzhou dialect 2
温州话 1

How this entity was disambiguated

Statements (49)

Predicate Object
instanceOf Chinese topolect
Sinitic language variety
variety of Wu Chinese
altName Wenzhou dialect
linked to: Wenzhounese

Wenzhouhua
linked to: Wenzhou
city Wenzhou
contrastWith Shanghainese
Standard Mandarin
linked to: Standard Chinese
country China
dialectOf Wu Chinese
geographicDistribution Wenzhou metropolitan area
linked to: Wenzhou

surrounding counties of Wenzhou
hasDialect rural Wenzhounese
suburban Wenzhounese
urban Wenzhounese
hasPhonologicalFeature complex consonant clusters
rich vowel inventory
historicalDevelopment descended from Old Wu
ISO639-6Code wzhn
languageBranch Sinitic
languageFamily Sino-Tibetan
languageGroup Wu
linguisticTypology analytic language
mutualIntelligibility low with Mandarin Chinese
low with most other Wu varieties
nativeName 温州话
linked to: Wenzhounese
notableFeature complex tone sandhi
conservative phonological features
highly distinctive phonology
lexical differences from Mandarin
syntactic differences from Mandarin
notableFor being difficult for Chinese military cryptanalysis during wartime
province Zhejiang
linked to: Zhejiang Province
region East China
linked to: eastern China

southeastern China
reputation notoriously difficult to understand for speakers of other Chinese varieties
script Han script
spokenIn Wenzhou
Zhejiang province
linked to: Zhejiang Province

southeastern Zhejiang
linked to: Zhejiang Province
status regional language variety
subclassOf Chinese language
Sinitic languages
linked to: Chinese language

Wu Chinese
tone tonal language
usedBy local population of Wenzhou
usedIn daily communication in Wenzhou
wordOrder SVO
writingSystem Chinese characters

How these facts were elicited

Referenced by (6)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Wu Chinese hasMajorVariety Wenzhounese
Wu dialects hasMajorVariety Wenzhounese
Wenzhounese nativeName 温州话
linked to: Wenzhounese
Wenzhounese altName Wenzhou dialect
linked to: Wenzhounese
Taihu Wu contrastWith Wenzhounese
Oujiang Wu hasAlternativeName Wenzhou dialect
linked to: Wenzhounese