Taihu Wu

A notable exception is the dialect of the town of Jinxiang, which is a linguistic exclave of Taihu Wu in Zhenan Min-speaking Cangnan county of Wenzhou prefecture in Zhejiang province. Speakers in regions around Taihu Lake and Hangzhou Bay, are the largest population among all Wu speakers. Taihu Wu dialects such as Shanghainese, Shaoxing and Ningbo are mutually intelligible even for L2 Taihu speakers.

Linguistic affinity has also been used as a tool for regional identity and politics in the Jiangbei and Jiangnan regions. While the city of Yangzhou was the center of trade, flourishing and prosperous, it was considered part of Jiangnan, which was known to be wealthy, even though Yangzhou was north of the Yangzi River. Once Yangzhou's wealth and prosperity were gone, it was then considered to be part of Jiangbei, the "backwater".

After Yangzhou was removed from Jiangnan, many of its residents switched from Jianghuai Mandarin, the dialect of Yangzhou, to Taihu Wu dialects. In Jiangnan itself, multiple subdialects of Wu competed for the position of prestige dialect.

In 1984, around 85 million speakers are mutually intelligible with Shanghainese.

Taihu Wu varieties tend to preserve historical voiced initials. The number of phonemic vowels can reach numbers higher than that of some Germanic languages. Taihu Wu varieties typically have phonemic 7-8 tones, though some can go as high as 12 or as low as 5, and they all have highly complex tone sandhi.

• Su–Jia–Hu (Suzhou–Jiaxing–Huzhou, 蘇嘉湖小片), also known as Su–Hu–Jia (Suzhou–Shanghai–Jiaxing, 蘇滬嘉小片) – 23 million speakers in 1987
  • Suzhou dialect (Jiangsu)
  • Shanghainese
  • Jiaxing dialect (Zhejiang)
  • Wuxi dialect (Jiangsu)
• Tiaoxi (苕溪小片, now considered to be a subbranch or sister group to Suzhou–Shanghai–Jiaxing) – 3 million speakers in 1987
  • Huzhou dialect (Zhejiang)
  • Southeast Guangde dialect (Anhui)

Northwestern Wu

• Piling (毗陵小片, spoken in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces) – 8 million speakers in 1987
  • Changzhou dialect (Jiangsu)
• Hangzhou (杭州小片) – 1.2 million speakers in 1987
  • Hangzhou dialect (Zhejiang)

Northern Zhejiang

• Lin–Shao (臨紹小片) – 7.8 million speakers in 1987
  • Shaoxing dialect (Zhejiang)
  • Lin'an (Zhejiang)
• Yongjiang 甬江小片 or Mingzhou (明州小片) – 4 million speakers in 1987
  • Ningbo dialect (Zhejiang)
  • Zhoushan (Zhejiang)
• Jinxiang dialect (金鄉話, appears to be an isolate, but closely related to the Taihu Wu varieties of Northern Zhejiang.)

• Shanghai dialect
• Ningbo dialect
• Hangzhou dialect
• Suzhou dialect
• Changzhou dialect
• Wuxi dialect
• Jiangyin dialect
• Qi–Hai dialect
• Jinxiang dialect