[tasogare]

Wu language has a written form: Chinese characters. You can check reading of characters on this website: http://wu-chinese.com/minidict/ or this one https://www.wugniu.com

The fact you don't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Same goes for Taiwanese Southern Min: a lot of natives think "it's not a written language" where in fact there are both romanizations and a way to write it with Chinese characters.

The central government is actively fighting standardization effort (both romanization and writing in Chinese characters) and push the fiction of Wu and other Sinitic languages (Cantonese, Hakka, Min, etc.) as merely dialects, as a way to destroy them. The method is not new, is has been policy in France, Taiwan and probably other countries. It's a real shame that Apple is validation China's propaganda on that front.

[fredwu]

Thanks for the info, that's very interesting.

> The fact you don't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I take your point.

Interestingly, growing up in the late 80s, we were briefly taught Zhuyin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo), but not this. I don't believe my parents (both native Shanghainese) even know how to "spell" Shanghainese.

Ah, the lost art...