Taihu Wu (吳語太湖片) or Northern Wu (北部吳語) is a Wu Chinese language spoken in much of the southern part of the province of Jiangsu, including Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, the southern part of Nantong, Jingjiang and Danyang; the municipality of Shanghai; and the northern part of Zhejiang province, including Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Ningbo, Huzhou, and Jiaxing.
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.
Once Yangzhou's wealth and prosperity were gone, it was then considered to be part of Jiangbei, the "backwater".
In Jiangnan itself, multiple subdialects of Wu competed for the position of prestige dialect.
[3] Taihu Wu varieties tend to preserve historical voiced initials.