A few questions about Shanghainese 关于上海话的一些问题

[anonymoose]

Firstly, the forum member ala posted this a couple of years ago, with example sentences in different tenses in Shanghainese:

PERFECTIVE -coule

Chiecoule va? (Eaten yet?)

Vae chiecoule va?

Non Vae chiecoule va? (Have you eaten?)

Cintsau non Vae chiecoule va? (Have you eaten today?)

COMPLETIVE -thele

Chiethele va? (Finished/done eating?)

Vae chiethele va?

Non Vae chiethele va?

Cintsaughe Vae ne, non chiethele va?

SIMPLE PAST -laa

Chielaa va? (Ate?)

Vae chielaa va?

Non Vae chielaa va?

Cintsau non Vae chielaa va?

INITIATIVE -le

Chiele va? (Started to eat yet?)

Vae chiele va?

Non Vae chiele va? (Have you started to eat yet?)

Cintsaughe Vae ne, non chiele va?

PERFECT PROGRESSIVE -lahei

Chielahei va? (Have you been eating?)

Vae chielahei va?

Non Vae chielahei va?

Cintsaughe Vae ne, non chielahei va?

PRESENT PROGRESSIVE leila... -lahei

Leila chielahei va? (Are you eating?)

Vae leila chielahei va?

Non Vae leila chielahei va?

Cintsaughe Vae ne, non leila chielahei va?

NEAR FUTURE -chuaale

Non chiechuaale va? (Are you about to eat?)

Vae chiechuaale va?

Non Vae chiechuaale va?

Cintsaughe Vae ne, non chiechuaale va?

FUTURE weite

Vae weite chie va? (Will you eat the food?)

Non Vae weite chie va?

Cintsaughe Vae non weite chie va?

FUTURE PROGRESSIVE weite... -lahei

Gegnae Vae non mintsau weite ei chielahei va? (Will you still be eating this food tomorrow?)

FUTURE COMPLETIVE weite... -thele

Gegnae Vae non mintsau weite chiethele va? (Will you be done eating this food by tomorrow?)

FUTURE PERFECTIVE weite... -laale

Non mintsau weite chielaale va? (Will you have eaten by tomorrow?)

FUTURE DURATIONAL weite... -thehie

Non Vae weite chiethehie va? (Will you be eating for some time?)

What are the corresponding characters for these sentences? I find the romanization used here rather confusing.

PERFECTIVE

今朝侬饭吃过勒伐？

Secondly, what are the Shanghainese sentence patterns for the Mandarin

把 construction

eg. How would you say 我把书放在了桌子上？

被 construction

eg. How would you say 我被狗咬了？

Are there any other sentence patterns that are unique to Shanghainese, or that at least don't exist in Mandarin?

[flameproof]

Is there a romanization for SHnese? I doubt it....

However, Wiki has a few helpful hints & links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghainese

[Yuchi]

I tried doing the characters for all those sentences but gave up

I'm fairly confident in the following, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

把 construction

eg. How would you say 我把书放在了桌子上？

The sentence is awkward but I think you mean "我把书放在桌子上了“

我拿书摆(?)来台子哴向了

被 construction

eg. How would you say 我被狗咬了？

我拨狗咬了[一口] (for colloquial effect, it sounds less awkward)

[renzhe]

I've been reading all the stuff ala has posted over the years and I find it fascinating.

I've never studied any Shanghai dialect (maybe one day), but I did force my girlfriend to say some phrases for me, out of pure curiosity, and funnily enough, she used the same examples, so I'm pretty sure about the first few.

I don't know how to properly write Shanghainese, so I'm giving the Mandarin equivalents:

Chiecoule va? = 吃过了妈?

Chiethele va? = 吃到了妈?

Chielaa va? = ??? I assume it's the same as below

Chiele va? = 吃了妈?

Cintsau = 今早 or 今朝

Non = 侬 (= 你)

This is the entirety of my Shanghaihua knowledge, so take it with some salt.

EDIT: Apparently Chiethele va? actually is 吃着了妈?

[lewellyn]

PERFECTIVE

今朝侬饭吃过勒伐？

Secondly, what are the Shanghainese sentence patterns for the Mandarin

把 construction

eg. How would you say 我把书放在了桌子上？

The Shanghainee says: 吾呐（拿）素（书）放勒（放在）台子（桌子）高头（上）。

被 construction

eg. How would you say 我被狗咬了？

吾被狗呢奥（咬）勒。

I am a Shanghainee. But nowadays more and more teenages in Shanghai do not speak Shanghai tongue. Hope this helps!

[anonymoose]

Thanks for the reply. In fact I had only been in Shanghai for a couple of months when I made the first post, but having lived there for over a year since then, I now understand all of those sentences except for one:

NEAR FUTURE -chuaale

Non chiechuaale va? (Are you about to eat?)

Vae chiechuaale va?

Non Vae chiechuaale va?

Cintsaughe Vae ne, non chiechuaale va?

What is the chuaale in these sentences?

[renzhe]

How easy is the dialect to pick up for a Mandarin speaker? Can you understand it now?

[anonymoose]

How easy is the dialect to pick up for a Mandarin speaker? Can you understand it now?

It really depends on who's speaking. Young girls are fairly easy to understand, whereas older people can be quite difficult.

Shanghainese is the only dialect I have learnt, so I can't compare its difficulty with others such as cantonese or minnan, but I think it is fairly easy to learn if you make a concerted effort to do so. Most of the grammar is similar to mandarin, as is much of the vocabulary. But the real difficulty is with pronunciation. Tone sandhi affect practically every word in a sentence, and there are few resources to refer to when you have questions. Asking a native speaker about grammar or tones often gets responses such as "Shanghainese doesn't have grammar" or "Shanghainese doesn't have tones", or "Shanghainese tones are like Japanese"!

[Goujian]

Let me 'decipher' them. The romanization is odd for me. Since Shanghainese is supposed to be written in Chinese characters, using latin characters as sort of a gloss. (My 'romanization is given in parentheses)

I'll do some of them.

PERFECTIVE -coule 過嘞 (ku leh)

Chiecoule va? (Eaten yet?) 喫過嘞伐? (chieh ku leh vah?)

Vae chiecoule va? 飯喫過嘞伐? (vae chieh ku leh vah?)

Non Vae chiecoule va? 儂飯喫過嘞伐? (Have you eaten?)

Cintsau non Vae chiecoule va? 今朝儂飯喫過嘞伐? (Have you eaten today?) (cin tsau nou/noun vae chieh kuleh vah?)

COMPLETIVE -thele 脱嘞 (theh leh)

Chiethele va? (Finished/done eating?) 喫脱嘞伐?

Vae chiethele va? 飯喫脱嘞伐?

Non Vae chiethele va? 儂飯喫脱嘞伐?

Cintsaughe Vae ne, non chiethele va? 今朝個飯呐, 儂喫脱嘞伐? (cintsaugeh vae neh, non/nou chieh theh leh va?

[Gucci Koo]

｜*｜我 把 书 放在了 桌子 上。

｜1｜我 把 书 摆了 台子 上。

｜ ｜uo nao si bale taizi shang.

｜2｜我 拿 书 摆了 台子 高头。

｜ ｜uo ne si bale taizi shang.

[chaussen]

What is the chuaale in these sentences?

chuaale=喫嘞/吃了(have eaten)