Internal Similarity of Taizhou Dialect

The similarity within Taizhou dialect circle is not only the similarity of dialects, but also the similarity of nationalities and customs. In fact, people in the eastern part of Taizhou dialect circle are mainly Taizhou immigrants. Taizhou people were generally formed in Ming dynasty, and Taizhou city was destroyed by war in Yuan dynasty. Later, Taizhou city gathered local and Suzhou people to rebuild in the early Ming Dynasty, forming Taizhou people and even Taizhou dialect. From the Ming Dynasty until today, there has never been a big war in Taizhou, so the nationalities and customs have been preserved.

Taizhou dialect circle is located in the north of the Yangtze River, which is different from the Wu dialect area in the south of the Yangtze River in culture and blood, but a considerable number of Taizhou people are from Jiangnan. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, due to the Song, Yuan and Ming Wars, the population of Jiangbei withered, so a large number of people were mobilized from Suzhou to move to Taizhou, which was called "Hongwu dismissed from office" in history. Therefore, many components of Taizhou dialect are consistent with Wu dialect, and Taizhou dialect is also the closest dialect to Wu dialect in China Mandarin system. On the other hand, Taizhou is located in the south of He Lixia area in the middle of Jiangsu Province (He Lixia is a huge wetland lake area), and the traffic to the north is inconvenient, which also blocks the immigrants from the north to a certain extent. Geographical isolation enables this area to maintain a relatively independent dialect and population.