What is wu katakana?

Wu katakana is a set of katakana characters used to represent the phonetic sounds of the Wu Chinese dialect. It is not a part of the standard Japanese writing system, but rather a specialized set of characters used for transcribing Chinese words and names in Japanese texts.

The Wu dialect is spoken in the southeastern part of China, including Shanghai and its surrounding areas. Wu katakana is sometimes also referred to as Shanghainese katakana, since Shanghai is the most prominent region where the Wu dialect is spoken.

Wu katakana consists of 63 characters, including a combination of existing katakana characters and new ones created specifically for the Wu dialect. Some of the characters have similar shapes to their counterparts in the standard katakana set, but with subtle differences in stroke order and positioning.

Wu katakana is not widely used outside of academic circles and specialized publications focusing on the Wu dialect. Most Japanese speakers are not familiar with it and may have difficulty reading texts written in this script.