Wenzhounese (simplified Chinese:温州话;traditional Chinese:溫州話;pinyin:Wēnzhōuhuà, Wenzhounese:Iu Chiu ho), also known asOujiang (瓯江话;甌江話;Ōujiānghuà),Tong Au (东瓯片;東甌片;Dōng'ōupiàn) orAu Nyü (瓯语;甌語;Ōuyǔ), is the language spoken inWenzhou, the southern prefecture ofZhejiang, China. It is the most divergent division ofWu Chinese, with little to nomutual intelligibility with other Wu dialects or any othervariety of Chinese. It features noticeable elements in common withMin Chinese, which is spoken to the south inFujian.Oujiang is sometimes used as the broader term, andWenzhou for Wenzhounese proper in a narrow sense.

Given its long history and the isolation of the region in which it is spoken, Wenzhounese is so unusual in itsphonology that it has the reputation of being the least comprehensible dialect for an averageMandarin speaker.^[2][3] It preserves a large amount of vocabulary ofclassical Chinese lost elsewhere, earning itself the nickname "theliving fossil", and has distinct grammatical differences from Mandarin.^[4][5]

Wenzhounese is one of fivevarieties of Chinese other than Standard Mandarin used for broadcasting byChina Radio International, alongsideCantonese,Hokkien,Teochew, andHakka.

Wenzhounese is part of theWu group of Chinese dialects, sharing many linguistic features with them.^[6][7] These are spoken over the Zhejiang and southJiangsu provinces.^[8] Wenzhounese is seen as a typical representative of southern Wu.^[9]

Wenzhounese is spoken primarily in Wenzhou and the surrounding southern portion ofZhejiang, China. To a lesser extent, it is also spoken in scattered pockets ofFujian in southeastern China. Overseas, it is spoken in increasingly larger communities in the United States inFlushing Chinatown in the Queens borough of New York City, and theChinatowns in Brooklyn inNew York City.^[10][11][12] Wenzhounese is also spoken by someOverseas Chinese communities in Europe, in particular Italy, France, and Spain.^[13] It is used more widely among theChinese people in Italy than Mandarin.^[14][15] Over 80% of the Chinese diaspora that are resident in the city ofPrato, Tuscany, were born in Zhejiang Province.^[16]

Wenzhounese can be generally divided into the following three dialects:

• Northern Dialect, including dialects spoken in Wenzhou, Ouhai, Yongqiong, Yongjia, and some towns in Yueqing like Liushi and Baixiang.
• Southern Dialect, includingRui'an dialect,Wencheng dialect, Longgang dialect, Pingyang dialect, etc.
• Northeastern Dialect, which is spoken in the city of Yueqing.

The most important difference between eastern Wenzhounese dialects such as Wencheng and Wenzhou proper are tonal differences (Wencheng has no falling tones) and the retention of/f/ before/o/:

The tones of all other Oujiang dialects are similar to Wenzhounese. (Wenzhounesepuu transcribes the lengthenedentering tone.)

/l/ is lateral, and/j/ ispalatal.

The onlycoda is thevelar nasal, in/aŋeŋoŋ/ andsyllabic[ŋ̩].

Wenzhou has threephonemic tones. While it has eight phonetic tones, most of these are predictable: Theyīn–yáng tone split dating from Middle Chinese still corresponds to the voicing of the initial consonant in Wenzhou, and theshǎng tones are abrupt and end inglottal stop (this has been used as evidence for asimilar situation independently posited forOld Chinese).^[18] Therù tones, however, are unusual in being distinct despite having lost their final stops; in addition, thevowel has lengthened, and the tone has become more complex than the other tones (though some speakers may simplify them to low falling or rising tones).^[19]

Theshǎng andrù tones are barely distinguishable apart from the voicing of the initial consonant, and so are phonetically closer to two tones than four. Chen (2000) summarizes the tones as M & ML (ping), MH (shǎng), HM & L (qu), and dipping (MLM,rù); not only are thepíng andqù pairs obviously distinct phonetically, but they behave as four different tones in the ways they undergotone sandhi.^{[clarification needed]}

As inShanghainese, in Wenzhounese only some of the syllables of a phonological word carry tone. In Wenzhounese there may be three such syllables, with the tone of any subsequent (post-tonic) syllables determined by the last of these. In addition, there may be pre-tonic syllables (clitics), which take a low tone. However, in Wenzhounese only one tonic word may exist in aprosodic unit; all other words are reduced to low tone.

Up to three tonic syllables may occur together, but the number of resulting tones is reduced bytone sandhi. Of the six phonetic tones, there are only fourteen lexical patterns created by two tonic syllables. With one exception, theshǎng andqù tones reduce to HM (yīn qù) before any other tone, and again with one exception, therù tone does not interact with a following tone. Theshǎng andrù tones change a preceding non-rù tone to HM, and are themselves never affected.

(Sandhi that are exceptions to the generalizations above are in bold.)

With a compound word of three syllables, the patterns above apply to the last two. The antepenultimate tonic syllable takes only two possible tones, bydissimilation: low if the following syllable (in sandhi form) starts high (HM), high otherwise. So, for example, the unusually long compound noun "daily necessities" (lit., 'firewood-rice-oil-salt-sauce-vinegar-tea') has the underlying tones

|ML.MH.ML.ML.HM.HM.ML|

Per sandhi, the last two syllables become L.L. The antepenult then dissimilates to H, and all pre-tonic syllables become L, for:

/L.L.L.L.H.L.L/

At a phrasal level, these tones may separate, with a HM tone, for example, shifting to the beginning of a phrase. In the lexicalized phrase "radio receiver" ('wireless telephone tube'), the underlying tones are

|ML.HM.L.L.ML|

Per sandhi, the last two become HM.ML. There is no dissimilation, explained by this being grammatically a lexicalized phrase rather than a compound. The HM shifts forward, with intermediate syllables becoming M (the tone the HM leaves off at):

/HM.M.M.M.ML/

Although checked (MLM) syllables rarely change in compound words, they can change in phrases: "tall steel case" is underlyingly M.MLM.HM. The middle syllable shifts to HM, and sandhi operates on this *HM.HM sequence to produce HM.ML. The HM then shifts back, yielding /HM.M.ML/.

Such behaviour has been used to support arguments that contour tones in languages like Chinese are single units and they are independent of vowels or other segments.^[21]

Wenzhou has a tonaldeictic morpheme. To convey the sense of "this", theclassifier changes its tone torù (dipping), and a voiced initial consonant is devoiced. For example, from/pa˧/ 'group' there is/pa˧˨˧/ 'this group', and from/le˧˩/ 'some (people)' there is/l̥e˧˨˧/ 'these (people)'.^[21]

Wenzhounese is reputed to have been used during theSecond Sino-Japanese War during wartime communication viacode talkers and in theSino-Vietnamese War for programming militarycode.^[22][23] There is a common rhymed saying in China that reflects this comprehension difficulty: "Fear not the Heavens, fear not the Earth, but fear the Wenzhou man speaking Wenzhounese" (天不怕，地不怕，就怕温州人说温州话).

There are several sub-branches of Oujiang dialects, and some are not mutually intelligible with the Wenzhou city dialect and the Wencheng dialect, but neighboring dialects are often mutually intelligible. For example, there are 2 dialects spoken in Li'ao Village in theOuhai District of Wenzhou: one spoken in Baimen (白門), where the local people have姜 as their surname, and one spoken in Wangzhai (王宅), where local people have normally王 or黄 as their surname. Their dialects are almost fully mutually intelligible, except for a few vocabulary items. An example would be the word for "garbage" (垃圾), which is/ʔlutsuu/ in the Baimen dialect and/ʔladʒee/ in the Wangzhai dialect.

Numbers in Oujiang Dialects

(The long vowels transcribe the lengthenedru tone.)

A translation of part of theNew Testament, specifically thefour gospels and the book ofActs, was published in 1894 under the title "Chaò-Chḯ Yi-sû Chī-tuh Sang Iah Sing Shī: Sz̀ fuh-iang tà sź-du 'ae-djüe fa üe-tsiu t'û¹-'ò", with the entire book in Romanized Wenzhou dialect.^[24]

• List of varieties of Chinese
• Wenzhounese romanisation
• Suzhou dialect
• Shanghainese
• Hangzhou dialect

• Qian Nairong (1992).Dāngdài Wúyǔ yánjiū. (Contemporary Wu linguistics studies). Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. (錢乃榮. 1992. 當代吳語研究. 上海敎育出版社)ISBN 7-5320-2355-9
• Shen, Kecheng (2009).Wēnzhōuhuà cíyǔ kǎoshì. Ningbo: Ningbo chubanshe. (宁波 : 宁波出版社, 2009.)
• Li, Rong (2012),中國語言地圖集 [Language Atlas of China] (in Chinese) (2 ed.), The Commercial Press,ISBN 978-7-100-07054-6.