ABSTRACT
The classification of the group’s languages causes serious problems. Yuan Jiahua characterized Wu languages using exemplification only from the tongues of Suzhou and Yongkang, and he neglected the classification of Wu ethnolects completely. Gan languages occupy the major part of the territory of Jiangsu Province, situated, despite its traditional name, not west, but south of the Yangtze River. In the north and northeast, the province neighbors on the provinces of Hubei, Anhui, and Zhejiang, that is, the areas of Mandarin languages, especially those of the Jianghuai group; in the west, it neighbors on the Xiang language. Hakka are the only group of Chinese languages to not occupy a compact area – instead, its ethnolects are dispersed as language islands across a remarkably vast territory. The Min language group is the oldest of the branches of the trunk of the Sinitic languages.
