A Study Of "Wu 's Dialect"

Wuxiafangyankao(《吴下方言考》)is a book written by Hu Wenying in Qing Dynasty,focusing on the dialect words in the area of north Wu dialect such as Changzhou and Suzhou.This book researched numerous words by a rigorous style, so it’s an academic achievementand and a valuable material in the research of Wu dialect words.This paper for the first time be a more systematic research on the basis of The proofreader And Commentary About Wuxiafangyankao(《吴下方言考校装》)written by Xufu, aimed at providing a solid foundation for academia to understand and use this book better.In the first chapter,under the premise of phonetic notation conducted exhaustive research,we summarized the basic style and means of Hu’s phonetic, pointed out the shortcomings. We think Hu’s basic phonetic dialect sound is from Changzhou, not the whole north Wu dialect,corrected the broad inaccurate understanding before.The second chapter analyzed the origin and structure of the quotation,focusing on clarifing the variety of mistakes in research process, which will reduce the overall quality of the book.The third chapter investigated the book’s entries, two main issues were discussed, one is the phenomenon of cognates established repeatedly, another is about the confusion of Wu dialect words and Tongyu.It should be emphasized that both phenomena are common in similar works.In the fourth chapter, we compared Wuxiafangyankao(《吴下方言考》)with several similar works from synchronic or diachronic perspective,aimed to define the value and status of this book in academic history. By comparion Ⅰ believe that Wuxiafangyankao(《吴下方言考》)represents the highest level of traditional dialect words textual research.