Shanghainese

This article is about the dialect. For the people, see Shanghainese people.

In English, the term "Shanghainese" sometimes refers to all Wu Chinese dialects.

Shanghainese (上海閒話 [z̥ɑ̃̀héɦɛ̀ɦʊ̀] in Shanghainese), or the Shanghai dialect (simplified Chinese: 上海话 or 沪语traditional Chinese: 上海話 or 滬語; ), is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai and the surrounding region. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Shanghainese, like other Wu dialects, is largely not mutually intelligible with other Chinese dialects such as Standard Mandarin. It is only partially intelligible with other subbranches of the Wu language group.

Shanghainese is one of the representative dialect of Northern Wu; it contains vocabulary and expressions from the entire Northern Wu area (southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang). With nearly 14 million speakers, Shanghainese is also the largest single coherent form of Wu Chinese. It once served as the regional lingua franca of the entire Yangtze River Delta region.

Shanghainese is rich in consonants and pure vowels [i y ɪ ɥ e ø ɛ ə ɐ a ɑ ɔ ɤ o ʊ u]. Like other northern Wu dialects, the Shanghai dialect has voiced initials [b d ɡ ɦ z v d​͡ʑ ʑ] (although technically these are slack voiced, adding a slightly breathy quality to a following vowel). Neither Mandarin nor Cantonese has voiced initials. The Shanghainese tonal system is significantly different from other Chinese languages. Shanghainese is a language with two live tonal contrasts (high and low), while Mandarin and Cantonese are contour tonal languages.

History and Current Status

Shanghai did not become a regional centre of commerce until it was opened to foreign investment during the late Qing Dynasty. Consequently, dialects spoken around Shanghai had long been subordinate to those spoken around Jiaxing and later Suzhou. In the late 19th Century, most vocabulary of the Shanghai region had been a hybrid between Northern Jiangsu and Ningbo dialects.^[1] Since the 1850s, owing to the growth of Shanghai's economy, Shanghainese has become one of the fastest-developing dialects of Wu Chinese, undergoing rapid changes and quickly replacing Suzhou dialect as the prestige dialect of the region. It underwent sustained growth that reached a hiatus in the 1930s during the Republican era, when migrants arrived in Shanghai and immersed themselves in the local tongue.

After 1949, the government introduced Standard Mandarin as the national language of all China. The influence of Shanghainese began to wane. Especially since China's economic reforms began in 1978, Shanghai became home to a great number of migrants from all over the country. Due to the national prominence of Standard Mandarin, learning Shanghainese was no longer necessary for migrants, because those educated after the 1950s were generally fluent in Mandarin to some degree. However, Shanghainese remained a very important part of the city's culture, and retained its prestige status within the local population. In the 1990s, it was still common for some local radio and television broadcasts to be carried out in Shanghainese. In 1995, a TV series called "Nie Zhai" (the Evil Debt) was filmed and broadcast entirely in Shanghainese; when it was broadcast in other places in China, mainly in adjacent Wu-speaking provinces, subtitles in Mandarin were added. Another TV comedy programme "Lao Niang Jiu" (Old Uncle) has been broadcast since 1999, and is still quite popular among Shanghainese residents. Owing to fears of regionalism, however, Shanghainese programming were gradually stamped out. Education in Shanghainese was forbidden, with teachers enforcing a ban on speaking Shanghainese in primary and secondary schools. In addition, Shanghai's new status as a cosmopolitan global city further consolidated the status of Mandarin as the standard language in which to conduct business and services.^[1]

Since 2005, new movements have emerged to protect Shanghainese. At municipal legislative discussions in 2005, former Huju actress Ma Lili moved to "protect" the language, stating that she was one of the few remaining Huju actresses who still retained authentic Shanghainese pronunciation in their performances. Shanghai's party boss Chen Liangyu, a native Shanghainese himself, reportedly supported her proposal.^[1] There has been talks of re-integrating Shanghainese into pre-kindergarten education.

Shanghai's main TV and radio stations now broadcast almost exclusively in Mandarin.

Intelligibility and Variations

Shanghainese is not mutually intelligible with any dialect of Mandarin. It is around 50% intelligible (with 28.9% lexical similarity with the Mandarin heard in Beijing) with Standard Mandarin^[2]. Modern Shanghainese, however, has been significantly influenced by modern Mandarin. This makes the Shanghainese spoken by young people in the city different from that spoken by the older population, sometimes significantly. It also means that inserting Mandarin into Shanghainese sentences during everyday conversation is very common, at least amongst young people. Like most subdivisions of Chinese, it is easier for a local speaker to understand Mandarin than it is for a Mandarin speaker to understand the local speech.

Shanghainese is part of the larger Wu subgroup of Chinese. It is similar, to a certain degree, to the language heard in neighboring Kunshan, Suzhou, and Ningbo. People mingling between these areas do not need to code-switch to Mandarin when they speak to each other. However, there are noticeable tonal and phonological changes which do not impede intelligibility. As the dialect continuum of Wu continues to further distances, however, significant changes occur in phonology and lexicon to the point where it is no longer possible to converse intelligibly. The majority of Shanghainese speakers find that by Wuxi, differences become significant and the Wuxi dialect would take weeks to months for a Shanghainese speaker to fully "pick up". Similarly, Hangzhou dialect is understood by most Shanghainese speakers, but it is considered "rougher" and does not have as much flow in comparison. The language evolved in and around Taizhou, Zhejiang, by which point it becomes difficult for a Shanghainese speaker to comprehend. Wenzhou dialect, spoken in southern Zhejiang province, although considered part of the Wu subgroup of languages, is not at all intelligible with Shanghainese.

Shanghainese is not mutually intelligible with Wenzhou dialect, Cantonese, Minnan, or any other dialect groups of Chinese.

Sounds

The sounds of Shanghainese are categorized in initials and rimes. Initial is the first part of syllable, usually a consonant, and rime is the part that follows. Tone is also a phonological feature in Shanghainese. Syllabic tone, which is typical to the other Sinitic languages, has largely become verbal tone in Shanghainese.

Initials

Shanghai dialect has a set of "voiced" (actually slack voiced) as well as voiceless aspirated and unaspirated stops and affricates. Moreover, there are unvoiced and slack voiced sets of fricatives. Palatalized initials also feature in Shanghai dialect. The /l/ consonant is also particular in that there is a slight flapping of the tongue during speech: [ɺ]. The sound may be made by lightly placing the tongue on the back of the upper set of teeth. However this flapping is not present when each character is individually pronounced.

Rimes

The Middle Chinese [-m] ending rimes in Shanghai dialect have merged with [-n], some of which subsequently dropped off. Some Middle Chinese [-ŋ] ending rime characters have become rimes with a nasalized ending, [iã, uã, uɒ̃]. Middle Chinese [-p -t -k] rimes have become glottal stops [-ʔ].

In certain variants, the [u] is pronounced unrounded (close back unrounded, [ɯ]).

Tones

The Shanghainese tone system is simpler than that of other Wu dialects. However, traditional descriptions use the customary Chinese tone classification, with five named tones in this case:

The term yang shu represents a conflation of the yang registers of the historical ping, shang, and qu tones. The conditioning factors which led to the yin-yang split still exist in Shanghainese, as they do in other Wu dialects: Yang tones are only found with voiced initials (b d ɡ z v dʑ ʑ m n ɲ ŋ l j w ɦ), while the yin tones are only found with voiceless initials. The ru tones are abrupt, and describe those rimes which end in a glottal stop /ʔ/. That is, both the yin-yang distinction and the ru tones are allophonic (dependent on syllabic structure); the Shanghai dialect has only a two-way phonemic tone contrast, falling vs rising, and then only in open syllables with voiceless initials. It will be seen next that this tone contrast actually applies to the phonological word, not to the syllable: No matter how many syllables there are in a word, there can only be a two-way contrast, and then only if the first syllable is open and has a voiceless initial.

Tone sandhi and the case for word-level tone

In polysyllabic words or set phrases (phonological words), all syllables after the first lose their original tone and are pronounced with a high or low tone, depending on the tone of the first syllable, as shown in the table below. (That is, they take "neutral" tones as in many Mandarin words.) The first syllable is also modified (to some extent its tone spreads across to the following syllable), but it does not lose the tonal distinctions it may have.

If the first syllable is open and with a voiceless initial, the word will have a high pitch on either the first or second syllable, depending on whether the first syllable would have had a falling or rising tone when spoken alone. If the first syllable in closed and with a voiced initial, the last syllable of the word will have a high pitch. In all other cases, the second syllable will have a high pitch. The other syllables will have predictable mid or low pitches. That is, there are three tone patterns, only two of which are contrastive.

These patterns are reminiscent of Japanese pitch accent. Tone sandhi of polysyllabic compounds in the Shanghai dialect has attracted the interest of many scholars, who had previously given only careful consideration to the tone of the monosyllable while trying to describe the rules of tone sandhi for polysyllabic compounds.

Common words and phrases in Shanghainese

Note: Chinese characters for Shanghainese are not standardized and are provided for reference only. IPA transcription is for the Middle period of modern Shanghainese (中派上海话), pronunciation of those between 20 and 60 years old.

See also

• Shanghainese people
• Wu Chinese
• List of Chinese dialects
• Hangzhou dialect
• Suzhou dialect
• Wu Wikipedia

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} China Newsweek^{[dead link]}
2. ^ Glossika's index of mutual intelligibility

• Lance Eccles, Shanghai dialect: an introduction to speaking the contemporary language. Dunwoody Press, 1993. ISBN 1-881265-11-0. 230 pp + cassette. (An introductory course in 29 units).

External links

• Phonetics-alphabet Shanghaïen (Latin phonetic method of Shanghaïen, Fawu) Phonetics-alphabet Shanghaïen
• Shanghainese PronunciationShanghainese Pronunciation
• Shanghainese Dictionary: Glossika's Searchable Shanghai Wu Dictionary
• Shanghai Dialect: Resources on Shanghai dialect including a Web site (in Japanese) that gives common phrases with sound files
• Shanghainese-Mandarin Soundboard: A soundboard (requires Flash) of common Mandarin Chinese phrases with Shanghainese equivalents.
• Shanghai Dialect Words Learn and search Shanghai Dialect
• Wu Association
• Romanization of Shanghainese at Omniglot

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Shanghai dialect

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