Changzhou dialect (Simplified Chinese: 常州话; Traditional Chinese: 常州話; Pinyin: Chángzhōu huà) is a dialect of Wu, a Sino-Tibetan language, and belongs to the Taihu dialect group. It is spoken in the city of Changzhou and surrounding areas in Jiangsu province of China. It has many similarities with the Shanghainese and Suzhou dialect, but is largely not comprehensible between the speakers. It is not at all mutually intelligible with Mandarin, China's official language. It is much more closely related to the neighboring Wuxi dialect with which it is mostly mutually intelligible.
Phonetically, the Changzhou dialect makes use of a number of voiced or slack voiced initials that not found in Mandarin as well as a larger number of vowel sounds . The tone system also is of greater complexity, using 7 tones based on the classical tonal system. It also has a more complex tone sandhi than found in modern Chinese.
Read more about Changzhou Dialect: Geographic Distribution, Examples, See Also
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“The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the world over.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)