The Romanisation of the Wenzhou dialect of Wu Chinese, part of the greater Ou grouping of Wú dialects centered around the city, refers to the use of a Latinate alphabet as a means of phonetically representing the sounds of this dialect group.

Early Romanisation

The first instance of Wenzhounese Romanisation begins with the language documentation

Language documentation

Language documentation is the process by which a language is documented from a documentary linguistics perspective. It aims to “to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speech community”...

 efforts of Christian missionaries who translated the bible into many varieties of Chinese in both chinese characters and in phonetic romanisation systems based largely on the Wade-Giles

Wade-Giles

Wade–Giles , sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a romanization system for the Mandarin Chinese language. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade during the mid-19th century , and was given completed form with Herbert Giles' Chinese–English dictionary of 1892.Wade–Giles was the most...

 system. The first romanised form of Wenzhounese can be seen in an 1892 Gospel of Matthew translation.

Contemporary

In 2004, father-and-son team Shen Kecheng and Shen Jia published the work Wenzhouhua, which outlines a systematic method for romanising each initial and rhyme of the dialect. Its primary orthographic innovation lies in its means of expressing the three way distinction of Wú stops in an orthography which only distinguishes between voiced and unvoiced stops. The Wade-Giles

Wade-Giles

Wade–Giles , sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a romanization system for the Mandarin Chinese language. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade during the mid-19th century , and was given completed form with Herbert Giles' Chinese–English dictionary of 1892.Wade–Giles was the most...

-based systems deal with this as k, k', and g to represent /k/, /kʰ/, and /g/. Since voiced obstruents no longer exist in standard Chinese, pinyin deals with /k/ and /kʰ/ as g and k respectively. The Shens' system adopts this basic method as well and transcribes voiced stops by duplicating the voiced series of letters, so /g/ or /kʱ/ is gg in their system. Likewise, /ɦ/ is transcribed as hh. They adopt other pinyin conventions, such as x for what is normally transcribed in Chinese usage of the IPA

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

 as /ɕ/ and c for /tsʰ/. Vowels are transcribed with a number of digraphs though few are innovations. We see the influence of Chinese IMEs in their system as well, since v denotes /y/ and ov denotes /œy/. Another way it diverges from pinyin is in Wenzhounese's unrounded alveolar apical vowel /ɿ/ which is written as ii, since, unlike Mandarin, apical vowels are not in complimentary distribution with /i/ in Wenzhounese. Tones however are not marked via diacritics or tone spelling, but by simply placing superscript values of Chao's tone lettering system, identical to the practice in the IPA which diminishes its potential practicality as a written system of communication between native speakers.

Rhymes

Romanisation	IPA	Example characters
a	[a]
ae	[ɛ]
ai	[ai]
au	[au]
e	[ɜ]
ee	[e]
ei	[ei]
eu	[ɤu]
i	[i]
ie	[iɛ]
ii	[ɿ]
o	[o]
oe	[ø]
ov	[øy]
u	[u]
uo	[uɔ, yɔ]
v	[y]
ng	[ŋ]
ang	[aŋ]
eng	[eŋ]
ong	[oŋ]

Initials

Romanisation	IPA	Example characters
b	[p]
bb	[b]
c	[ts']
d	[t]
dd	[d]
f	[f]
g	[k]
gg	[g]
h	[h]
hh	[ɦ]
i	[j]
j	[tɕ]
jj	[dʑ]
k	[k']
l	[l]
m	[m]
n	[n]
ny	[ɲ]
ng	[ŋ]
p	[p']
q	[tɕ']
s	[s]
ss	[z]
t	[t']
u	[u]
w	[v]
x	[ɕ]
y	[j]
z	[ts]
zz	[dz]

Native perspectives

There has mostly not been a significant effort or interest on the part of locals to have a standard romanisation of the dialect. However, along with a growing economy and increased leisure, there has also been a growing local pride in the Wēnzhōu dialect, and attention towards romanisation or other dialect-based written communication systems will likely increase with time.