וו ג׳ינחואה

Jinhua Wu (金华话) is the prototypical representative of the Wuzhou Wu subgroup (婺州片), a primary branch of Wu Chinese coordinate with — not subordinate to — Taihu Wu (Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou). It is spoken by ~2M in central Zhejiang, in the basin of the Jinhua River. Wuzhou Wu is typologically conservative: it preserves the full medieval Chinese three-way obstruent contrast (voiceless / aspirated / voiced) like other Wu groups, but its tone system (typically 7–8 categories with distinctive contour shapes) and several lexical items (e.g. 1sg pronoun 我 [ŋo], 3sg 渠 [gɛ]) differ markedly from Taihu Wu, reflecting the early branching of Wuzhou from the rest of Wu. The region is the home of the famous Jinhua ham and was the birthplace of the Song-dynasty Neo-Confucian scholar Lü Zuqian.