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Shanghainese, sometimes referred to as the Shanghai dialect, is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. Shanghainese, like other Wu dialects, is not mutually intelligible with other Chinese dialects such as Standard Mandarin (see Mutually intelligible languages). Shanghainese is 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. In Western sources, the term "Shanghainese" often refers to all Wu dialects and not specifically the particular Wu dialect spoken in Shanghai. The total number of Wu speakers is over 80 million, the second largest Chinese language after Mandarin. Shanghainese is rich in consonants and pure vowels . Like other northern Wu dialects, the Shanghai dialect has voiced initials (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. Shanghainese is not encouraged to be spoken in schools and written in newspapers, and the media are strongly discouraged from broadcasting in contemporary Shanghainese. There is a lot of uncertainty between what gets aired in Shanghainese and what becomes censored (due to government fears of regionalism), thus most producers do not take this risk and only produce in Mandarin. Several television advertisements in Shanghainese have been removed shortly after airing. But there have been some TV series in Shanghainese that were approved since the mid-1990s. Back in 1995, a TV play series called "Nie Zhai" (the Evil Debt) was in Shanghainese; while it was broadcasted in other places in China, mainly in adjacent Wu-speaking provinces, subtitles in Mandarin were added rather than make a Mandarin version of the TV series. Another TV comedy programme "Lao Niang Jiu" (Old Uncle) has been broadcasting since 1999, and is still quite popular among Shanghainese residents. In 2004, a Tom and Jerry cartoon program dubbed with Shanghainese was blocked from broadcasting. Older and more rural forms of Shanghainese are still heard on the radio (catering to farming communities in the suburbs). But the Shanghainese are strongly encouraged by the government to speak Mandarin and celebrities are put on billboards with slogans like "Be a modern Shanghai person, speak Mandarin." In August 2005, there were media coverages reporting that Shanghainese would be taught in secondary school. This introduced great controversy. Proponents argue that this will make the students know their hometown better and help preserve local culture. Opponents argue that this will encourage discrimination based on people's origin. In September 2005, the Shanghai municipal government also launched a campaign to encourage Mandarin speaking in Shanghai. Among other requirements, all service-industry workers in Shanghai will be required to greet customers in Mandarin only, and pass Mandarin-fluency test by 2010. Those with bad or heavily-accented Mandarin must enroll in remedial Mandarin classes.
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. Initials Shanghai dialect has a set of voiced initials and exhibits unvoiced unaspirated and aspirated stops. Moreover, there are unvoiced and voiced sets of fricatives. Palatalized initials also feature in Shanghai dialect. The consonant is also particular in that there is a slight flapping of the tongue during speech, somewhat similar to the Japanese (which is romanized as r). 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 ending rimes in Shanghai dialect have merged with , some of which subsequently dropped off. Some Middle Chinese ending rime characters have become rimes with a nasalised ending, . Middle Chinese rimes have become glottal stops . In certain variants, the is pronounced unrounded (close back unrounded, ). Tones The Yang Shu tone is composed of Yang registers of the Ping, Shang and Qu tone characters. The Yin Ru and Yang Ru tones are abrupt tones, and apply only to those rimes in Shanghai dialect, which end in the glottal stop . If the Ru tone and tones automatically related to the voiced initials are not considered (as they are fixed into the syllabic structure), then the Shanghai dialect has 2 live tonal contrasts (/52/ and /335/). Advanced tone sandhi and argument for pitch accent classification: In polysyllabic words or set phrases, all syllables after the first lose their original tones and are pronounced based on the table below as "neutral" syllables. Even the first syllable that determines subsequent pitches is altered in a polysyllabic word. The patterns vary depending on the number of syllables in the word or set short phrase. Note: H = relative high pitch; L = relative low pitch. Notice that these patterns are quite similar to Japanese pitch accent patterns. Tone sandhi of polysyllabic compounds in the Shanghai dialect has attracted the interest of many scholars, who have previously given only careful consideration to the tone of the monosyllable while trying to describe the rules of tone sandhi for polysyllabic compounds. It has been argued that the number of tones of the Shanghai dialect, generally held to be five under previous analyses, can be reduced to only two underlying tone patterns, or tonemes, by recognizing the existence of the phoneme "voiced h" (Xiaowen Shen, University of Tokyo). See also | ||||||||
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