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Suzhounese / Soochow dialect of Wu language (苏州话，蘇州話，苏州闲话)
Native to: China
Region: Suzhou(Soochow), Jiangsu Province
Ethnicity: Suzhounese (Han Chinese)
Native speakers: Around 8 million
Language family: Sino-Tibetan

Suzhounese is a variety of Wu language and often considered as the representative of Wu language. Suzhou dialect has the common features of Wu language, which preserve voiced consonants, tones, and some expressions from Middle Chinese. To Chinese people who use other languages or dialects, Suzhounese sounds soft and tender.
Modern Suzhounese has 27 consonants, 46 vowels and 7 tones (high(44), level-rising(223), high falling(51), dipping(523), rising-falling(231), high checked(43) and rising checked(23)). In addition, the tones will change and new tones will occur when people read the phrases and sentences. In the video, the pinyin and IPA phonetics refer to the tones in the case when the characters are read separately.
In history, Suzhou was the cultural and economic center of the region of Wu. Many art forms, such as Kun Opera and Suzhou Pingtan, are based on Suzhounese. The voice of the video is from a lady who sings Pingtan as her career. Suzhounese was also used as a language for creating literature, like《海上花列传》，a novel written in the Qing dynasty. Suzhounese also greatly influenced the urban Shanghai dialect and the two when talking to each other can be understood basically.

Special Thanks:
The voice of all the audios is from 陈琰
Provider of translation, phonetics and other materials：Jin
Also thanks to Profesor Hua and Hamish
LINKS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou_dialect
https://www.wugniu.com/
Music: www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-hJ_ZvaKHE

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