Suzhounese (Suzhounese: ; ), also known as the Suzhou dialect (alternatively Soochow dialect), is the variety of Chinese traditionally spoken in the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu, China. Suzhounese is a variety of Wu Chinese, and was traditionally considered the Wu Chinese prestige dialect. Suzhounese has a large vowel inventory and it is relatively conservative in initials by preserving voiced consonants from Middle Chinese.
Suzhou dialect is spoken within the city itself and the surrounding area, including migrants living in nearby Shanghai.
The Suzhou dialect is mutually intelligible with dialects spoken in its satellite cities such as Kunshan, Changshu, and Zhangjiagang, as well as those spoken in its former satellites Wuxi and Shanghai. It is also partially intelligible with dialects spoken in other areas of the Wu cultural sphere such as Hangzhou and Ningbo. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese or Standard Chinese; but, as all public schools and most broadcast communication in Suzhou use Mandarin exclusively, nearly all speakers of the dialect are at least bilingual. Owing to migration within China, many residents of the city cannot speak the local dialect but can usually understand it after a few months or years in the area.
Source:
Second and third-person pronouns are suffixed with 笠for the plural. The first-person plural is a separate root, 伲 .
In the Suzhou dialect, geq8 is a very special demonstrative that is used alongside a separate set of proximal and distal demonstratives. geq8 can indicate referents appearing in a speech situation, which may be close to or far away from the deictic center, and under these conditions, geq8 is always used in combination with gestures. Hence geq8 can serve both proximal and distal functions.
å with 该 and 弯 with å½ means exactly the same thing and only differ in pronunciation. The use of neutral demonstrative pronoun became clear once proximal and neutral demonstrative pronouns are used.
When "æ¿" refers to time, there is no need to use the proximal and distal in opposition. The role of the neutral demonstrative is very obvious.
In this sentence, "æ°æÂÂ(弯æÂÂ)" cannot be replaced by "Ã¥ÂÂæÂÂ" because the Anti-Japanese War happened more than fifty years ago, so only the neutral or distal demonstrative can be used, not proximal.
When not referring to time, the proximal "Ã¥ÂÂ" and the neutral demonstrative "æ°" can be interchanged. For example, the "æ°" in "æ°个人å¿认å¾Â" can be replaced by "Ã¥ÂÂ".
"Ã¥ÂÂ", "该", "æ°", "弯" and "å½Â" cannot be used as subjects or objects alone, but must be combined with the following quantifiers, locative words, etc.
Example phrases:
ç°å¨ä»Âä¹Âæ¶åÂÂäºÂï¼ What time is it now?
ç°éµåÂÂ你身ä½Â好åÂÂï¼ How are you now?
Some non-native speakers of Suzhou speak the Suzhou dialect in a "stylized variety" to tell tales.
The Suzhou dialect has series of voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops, and voiceless and voiced fricatives. Moreover, palatalized initials also occur.
Voiced obstruents are typologically partially voiced instead of fully voiced. These consonants are devoiced word/phrase-initially, but are fully voiced within a phrase. This is most apparent for the fricatives becoming . Because of this devoicing, in single-syllable forms the distinction is actually the tone contour.
The glottal initials disappear if they are not at the beginning of a word/phrase, resulting in a smooth vocalic transition from the previous syllable. In this regard, it is possible to analyze both initials as a single phonological null onset when in this environment.
Notes:
The Suzhou dialect allows a nasal coda but does not distinguish between them. As such, the Middle Chinese nasal codas have largely either merged or been lost depending on the vowel it follows. Historical rimes following certain vowels are distinguished as the nasalized vowels , but otherwise merge into modern . Historical and rimes are entirely merged and also result in modern , or are lost after certain vowels becoming modern . Modern also results from the monophthongization of the historical diphthong rime ( in Baxter's notation, corresponding to the å final).
Middle Chinese rimes have become glottal stops, . Like other Northern Wu varieties, syllables with an underlying glottal stop coda usually manifest as a shortening of the vowel instead of an actual glottal stop , unless before a pause or at the end of an utterance.
Suzhou is considered to have seven tones. However, since the tone split dating from Middle Chinese still depends on the voicing of the initial consonant. Yang tones are only found with voiced initials, namelyà[bàdàáàzàvàdÃÂàÃÂàmànànòàà Âàlàæ], while the yin tones are only found with voiceless initials. These constitute just three phonemic tones: ping, shang, and qu. (Ru syllables are phonemically toneless.)
In Suzhou, the Middle Chinese é³丠tone and é³å» tones have fully merged as (2)31. The original é³å» 313 tone possibly still occurs in tone sandhi patterns as the second element of a chain, following a é´堥 syllable (though it could be analyzed differently; see Tone Sandhi section below).
Therefore, ä¹° and å has exactly the same pronunciation in literary and colloquial readings <sup>6</sup>ma , but can be distinguished in tone sandhi. å¼Âä¹° â å¼Âå .
Tone in Suzhou dialect, like other Northern Wu varieties is generally grouped by phrasal tone pattern, also called sandhi chains or sandhi domains.
An analysis by Wang (2011) describes Suzhou tone sandhi as rightward tone-spreading of the left-most (i.e. initial) syllable of a phrase. Such described "left-prominent" phrases with non-checked initial syllables of a given length have one of five possible contours, each equivalent to each of the five tones. While generally described as rightward tone-spreading of the initial syllable, it is also common for the phrasal tone pattern to not be the same as that of the initial tone. This is currently the system used on Wiktionary entries with Suzhou data.
To distinguish the individual tone from the pattern expected from its tone spreading, the patterns themselves are referred to with the format of tone number + X (1x, 2x, 3x, etc.).
A tone level of 0 in the above chart indicates a syllable with a neutral tone (), functionally comparable to that of Standard Chinese. The surface realization at the end of an utterance is a low akin to downstep, but in flowing speech is a mid/neutral pitch or may appear to copy the previous tone target.
Additionally, Li (1998) describes the 5x chain such that the second syllable has a slight rise. Li also describes a higher mid/high-level for the second syllable of a 6x chain. Li's 1x chain describes the pitch declining after the second syllable.
In phrases with checked initial syllables, the first two tones determine the overall contour. The resulting contour can be summarized as retaining the tone class (å¹³ä¸Âå») of the second syllable, but not the voicing class (é°é½). Both Tone 1 é°平 /44/ and Tone 2 é½平 /223/ will result in a Tone 2 contour (/223/). Both Tone 5 é°å» /523/ and Tone 6 é½å» /231/ will result in a Tone 5 contour (/523/).
Ye 1988 describes additional patterns where
However, Wang describes the same phrases differently, and so it is debatable whether these form distinct patterns:
As mentioned above, the tone pattern of a phrase frequently does not match the expected pattern based on the initial syllable's underlying tone.
Most frequently:
Functionally, a Tone 3 pattern (3x chain) is the least common to occur and mostly surfaces when the initial syllable is a numeral phrase ( <sup>3</sup>ci-zyu<sub>6</sub> ) or reduplicated verb ( <sup>3</sup>sia-sia<sub>3</sub> ). Below is a chart with examples of the common tone patterns:
Wang (p. 50) additionally identifies a pattern where in certain constructions Tone 5 (/523/) followed by another syllable simplifies to [52] while the second syllable retains its full tone. This can be analyzed comparably to Shanghainese right-prominent sandhi that prioritizes the second syllable and reduces preceding syllables. This right-prominent sandhi pattern occurs commonly in Verb + Object compounds.
In addition to the above simplification of Tone 5 /523/ to [52], Li (p. 216) additionally describes Tone 2 /223/ and Tone 6 /231/ similarly simplifying to [23 èç] in similar Verb + Object, as well as Adverb + Adjective structures
Identified by Bu (2025) describing Suzhou pingtan (but also applicable to Suzhou dialect normally), such tonal reduction generally occurs particularly for Tone 2 and Tone 6 syllables even when not in sandhi chains, and can further reduce to a simple mid/low tone. Because it can occur outside of Verb + Object or Adverb + Adjective syntactic conditions, Bu considers this tonal reduction to simply be a reduction of non-final syllables motivated by those tones (Tone 5 /523/, Tone 2 /223/, Tone 6 /231/) underlyingly being longer and having more tonal targets.
In contrast, Wang (p. 348) treats this pronoun + copula construction as a single 6x phrase.
There can be additional variation in how reduced the tones can become based on how casual the sentence is spoken by the speaker.
In the above sentence, the falling tone [Ã¥é] on ä» tsy and å tse is reduced to a high-flat [ÃÂ¥] in casual speech, in addition to the Tone 6 /231 èçé/ (å· ne, 飯 ve) and Tone 5 /523 Ã¥éç/ (å tse, å» chi) words already reducing to [23 èç] and [52 Ã¥é] even in slower speech.
In the case of casual speech spoken quickly, Wang does describe a pattern where the preceding syllable takes a neutral tone. If the word (often a pronoun, adverb, or quantifier) precedes another phrase, it can reduce to a simple /3/ tone. This reduced pattern can apply across polysyllabic words or even multiple words. This can be considered as describing the same phenomenon as above but with less phonetic detail.
The same phrase can take a different chain depending on which syllable or word is stressed.
Ballad-narratives
A "balladâÂÂnarrative" () known as "The story of Xue Rengui crossing the sea and Pacifying Liao" (), which is about the Tang dynasty hero Xue Rengui is believed to have been written in the Suzhou dialect.
Novels
Han Bangqing wrote The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai, one of the earliest novels in Wu dialect, in Suzhou dialect. Suzhou serves as an important drive for Han to write the novel. Suzhou dialect is used in innovative methods to demonstrate urban space and time, as well as the interrupted narrative aesthetics, making it an integral part of an effort, which is presented as a fundamental and self-conscious new thing. Han's novel also inspired other authors to write in Wu dialect.