Jiangnanese

Jiangnanese (江南話) is the language of the Jiangnan region of China, the area south of the Yangtze River Delta along the central coast, including much of Zhejiang province, southern Jiangsu, and Shanghai municipality. Jiangnan literally means 'south of the Yangtze River'. This area is the core area of the Wu Chinese branch, a Sinitic branch that is split into many regional varieties that sometimes lack mutual intelligibility. Jiangnanese is the Wu Chinese language that is traditionally considered the representative of this branch (Wu 吳語 is used as a formal name for the language), with Suzhounese being considered the most prestigious accent. As Shanghai rose in prominence, Shanghainese eventually took its place as the local koine of Jiangnanese.

North of the Jiangnan region is the Jianghuai region, where Jianghuainese, a branch of Mandarin/Northern Chinese with a Wu Chinese substratum, is dominant. Jiangnanese speakers once referred to this region as Jiangbei ('north of the Yangtze River'), but this was considered pejorative (the region at the time had inferior soil compared to the Jiangnan region, and the economic conditions were correspondingly more difficult), so the region adopted the neutral name Subei ('northern Jiangsu'), and the Wu-speaking southern Jiangsu area became increasingly called Sunan ('southern Jiangsu') as its natural counterpart.

As the Jiangnan/Jiangbei dichotomy gradually shifted to one between Sunan and Subei instead, the administrative split of the core Jiangnanese-speaking area across provincial boundaries also resulted in decreased usage of the umbrella term Jiangnanese and trend towards having to specify the dialect of a particular prefecture, district, or county, such as Shanghainese, Suzhounese, Ningbonese, or Hangzhounese, disadvantaging Jiangnanese compared to provincially-concentrated Sinitic languages that are able to use their provincial names as a common umbrella term for a clade of related lects, such as Hainanese, Jiangxinese, Hunanese, Yunnanese, or Sichuanese. Because Lexxify Hub uses such regional umbrella terms for Sinitic regional languages in its interface, Jiangnanese is in use as the name for the Northern Wu language, and it is hoped that this will facilitate cross-dialectal communication and greater opportunities to use and promote the Jiangnanese language among its speakers.