The Shaoxing dialect (simplified Chinese: 绍兴话/绍兴方言; traditional Chinese: 紹興話/紹興方言; pinyin: Shàoxīnghuà/Shàoxīng fāngyán) is a Wu dialect spoken in the city of Shaoxing more specifically in the city center of Yuecheng and its surrounding areas.
It is a representative Wu dialect with a tripartite distinction on voiced stop initials and a textbook register split with each of the four tonal categories of Middle Chinese being divided into upper and lower registers.
The suburban areas to the north and east stretching from Dongpu (东浦) to Doumen (斗门) and north of Pingshui (平水) in the southern suburban areas are basically the same as that of the city center.
Besides Chao, the Shaoxing dialect has received the most attention from Chinese dialectologist Wang Futang (王福堂) whose 1959 Shaoxinghua jiyin (绍兴话记音) was the first full-length paper in the modern era dedicated wholly to the dialect.
As with most locations in China, Shaoxing is also covered in the Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects.