Shanghainese - Definition and Overview

Shanghainese (上海話; pinyin: Shànghǎihuà, Shanghainese in SAMPA: [ zA~ hE h\E wo ]) is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. Wu has 87 million speakers as of 1991, and is the second largest form of Chinese after Mandarin (which has some 800 million speakers). 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.

Shanghainese is rich in consonants and pure vowels [i y ɿ ɥ e ø E ə ɵ a ɒ ɔ ɤ o u]. Like other northern Wu dialects, the Shanghai dialect has voiced initials [b d g z v dʑ ʑ]. Neither Mandarin nor Cantonese have voiced initials.

Shanghainese is a register language, with only two live tonal constrasts (high and low). Compare this with 4 in Mandarin, and 6 in Cantonese. The Shanghainese tonal system is instead similar to African languages; different from other Chinese languages, Thai and Vietnamese. For more information on the tonal system, visit http://www.zanhe.com/pitch.html.

Shanghainese is currently banned in schools, in newspapers, and the media is strongly discouraged to broadcast contemporary Shanghainese. Several television advertisements in Shanghainese have been removed shortly after airing. Just last year, a Tom and Jerry program dubbed with Shanghainese was blocked from broadcasting. The only form of Shanghainese currently allowed for public broadcast are Shanghainese Folk Opera and Orthodox Shanghainese (catering to farmers in the suburbs). Celebrities are put on billboards with slogans: "Be a modern Shanghainese, speak Mandarin."

Common Words and Phrases in Shanghainese

Unlike Mandarin, Shanghainese actually has the direct "yes" (ay/éh/ai) similar to English.

Initials

Shanghai dialect has a set of voiced initials and exhibits unvoiced unaspirated and aspirated stops. Moreover, there are unvoiced and voiced fricatives sets. Palatized initials also feature in Shanghai dialect. The /l/ consonant is also particular in that there is a slight flapping of the tongue during speech, somewhat similar to the Japanese r (although lateral and not post- alveolar). 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 nasalised 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, turned m).

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 [ ʔ ]. The Yin Shang tone (/55/) is not common in today's variants of the Shanghai dialect, having merged into the Yin Qu tone. If the Ru tone and tones automatically related to the voiced initials (b d g z v dʑ ʑ) are not considered (as they are fixed into the syllabic structure), then the Shanghai dialect has only 2 live tonal contrasts (/53/ and /34/). This makes it especially unique amongst Chinese dialects.

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.

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).

References

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

See also

• List of Chinese dialects

Romanization

(Vottay Da`oq复旦大学)

Initials

Rimes

Glottal Stop “q” can be replaced by double writing the following consonantal letter except for”m,n,h”.

There shall be only one of the vocalic letters (A,E,I,O,U) in one monosyllable,as there are no true diphthongal syllables in Shanghai dialect.

Rimes "UYN", "UYQ" can be shortened by "YN", "YQ".

Tones

The short high tone is only used in a monosyllable or the last syllable of a polysyllable. Long or short low tones are almost the same. Light low tone is always used in a polysyllable.

This romanisation was designed by LI Hui, Center for Anthropological Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

External links

• Project to Introduce and Promote Shanghainese (http://www.zanhe.com/). In English.
• Shanghai Dialect (http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/shanghaihua.html): Resources on Shanghai dialect including to a Web site (in Japanese) that gives common phrases with sound files
• Conversational Shanghai Chinese (http://www.linguasinica.com/Shanghai/): An online textbook of Shanghainese, with audio.