Hangzhou dialect is classified under the Wu Chinese, although some western linguists claim Hangzhou is a Mandarin Chinese language. Richard VanNess Simmons, a professor of Chinese at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA, claims that the Hangzhou dialect, rather than being Wu as it was classified by Yuen Ren Chao, is a Mandarin variant closely related to Jianghuai Mandarin. Hangzhou dialect is still classified under Wu. Chao had developed a "Common Wu Syllabary" for the Wu dialects. Simmons claimed that had Chao compared Hangzhou dialect to the Wu syllabary and Jianghuai Mandarin, he would have found more similarities to Jianghuai. Jianghuai Mandarin shares an "old literary layer" as a stratum with southern languages like Min Nan, Hakka, Gan and Hangzhou dialects, which it does not share with Northern Mandarin. Sino-Vietnamese also shares some of these characteristics. The stratum in Min Nan specifically consist of Zeng group and Geng group's "n" and "t" finals when an "i" initial is present. John H. McWhorter claimed that the Hangzhou was categorized as a Wu dialect because seven tones are present in Hangzhou, which is significantly more than the typical number of tones found in northern Mandarin dialects, which is four.
Geographic distribution
It stretches from yuhang xiasha in east to the Qiangtang River in south. A growing number of Hangzhounese speakers is emerging overseas in New York City, United States.
Phonology
Initials
Finals
Syllabic continuants:
The Hangzhou dialect has a rare "apical glide" which can precede vowels in finals. As with Shanghainese, the Middle Chineseentering tone characters, which ended in, now end in a glottal stop in the Hangzhou dialect, while Middle Chinese nasal endings have now merged as generic nasal finals or dropped nasalization altogether.
Tones
The Hangzhou tonal system is similar to that of the Suzhou dialect, in that some words with shàng tone in Middle Chinese have merged with the yīn qù tone. Since the tone split dating from Middle Chinese still depends on the voicing of the initial consonant, these constitute just three phonemic tones: pin, shang, and qu.
Time Expression of person, categorized by generation
History
The most important event to impact on Hangzhou's dialect was its establishment as Lin'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. When the Northern Song Dynasty was conquered by the Jin Dynasty in 1127, large numbers of northern refugees fled to what is now Hangzhou, speaking predominantly Mandarin of the Henan variety. Within 30 years, contemporary accounts record that immigrants outnumbered natives in Hangzhou. This resulted in Mandarin influences in the pronunciation, lexicon and grammar of the Hangzhou dialect. Further influence by Mandarin occurred after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1912. The localManchu garrisons were dissolved, adding significant numbers of Beijing dialect Mandarin speakers to the population. Because of the frequent commerce and intercourse between Hangzhou and Shaoxing, the Hangzhou dialect is also influenced by the Shaoxing dialect.
