Westerner speaking Shanghainese

[anonymoose]

There have been several thread on here about westerners speaking cantonese, but...

here is a westerner speaking shanghainese! (from about 00:55)

羡慕死了

[dalaowai]

Is that the Romanian girl who speaks Shanghainese? I remember a few years back seeing her on TV and said that she learned Shanghainese living with her Shanghainese husband's parents.

Good for her, I've been slowly working on learning it, however I have yet to find a good book/audio source that makes sense. I'd love to see something like Pimsleurs or Chinesepod for Shanghainese.

Dang Youku is slow in Canada.

[wannabeafreak]

Impressed.

[bhchao]

Here is Song Qingling speaking Shanghainese:

I am curious how much of today's Shanghainese is similar to hers in the word pronunciations.

[dalaowai]

nice clip bhchao! Thanks for sharing.

As per every Shanghainese 本地 taxi driver has told me, the new generation doesn't speak standard Shanghainese. I even have a book that teaches standard Shanghainese and my friends laughed saying that only their grandparents would understand those sentences.

[bhchao]

As per every Shanghainese 本地 taxi driver has told me, the new generation doesn't speak standard Shanghainese. I even have a book that teaches standard Shanghainese and my friends laughed saying that only their grandparents would understand those sentences.

It's a shame to see Shanghainese becoming Mandarinized. The Shanghainese of the older generation sure sounds more refined.

[msittig]

It's a shame to see Shanghainese becoming Mandarinized. The Shanghainese of the older generation sure sounds more refined.

No, it didn't. The recorded spoken language of the elite class always sounds more refined than everyday speech of the man on the street.

[dalaowai]

Modern Shanghainese was influenced by 苏北话 and even 宁波话 to a lesser degree. Due to a large migration of people from Jiangsu, their dialect was incorporated into popular lexicon.

[bhchao]

Even the Shanghainese spoken by non-elitists from 60 years ago sounds different when you compare it to the version spoken by today’s youth.

Shanghai dialect tends to carry “elitist” overtones, more so than Cantonese. My maternal grandfather, who grew up in 1930-1940s Shanghai, socialized more frequently with his Shanghainese friends than with native Mandarin speakers, even in Taiwan. At that time, Mandarin promotion in Taiwan was enforced "by the sword" at the expense of all other dialects.

Many of his friends looked down on Mandarin. During dinner parties in 1960s Taipei, he and his Shanghainese friends would stick to each other and converse in Shanghainese. Their Korean wives would converse in Mandarin with other Mandarin speakers, prompting one of the Shanghainese speakers to ridicule them "她們是傻瓜, 講國語"

[xiaocai]

It's a shame to see Shanghainese becoming Mandarinized. The Shanghainese of the older generation sure sounds more refined.

Basically I think this applies to all dialect, not jut Shanghainese. Blaming the alleged "Mandarinisation" the culprit is not very convincing to me. And how old is Shanghainese?

Shanghai dialect tends to carry “elitist” overtones

Maybe it used to, but I don't think it still does anymore, or probably just to Shanghainese themselves.

"她們是傻瓜, 講國語"

This doesn't sound very elitist to me, either.

[anonymoose]

Basically I think this applies to all dialect, not jut Shanghainese. Blaming the alleged "Mandarinisation" the culprit is not very convincing to me. And how old is Shanghainese?

I couldn't say how old Shanghainese as a distinct language is, but certainly the Wu language family has a long history.

Modern Shanghainese is certainly being Mandarinised. Many young speakers use Mandarin words (with Shanghainese pronunciation) when they speak Shanghainese.

[gato]

Here is Song Qingling speaking Shanghainese: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ7Bk...eature=related

I am curious how much of today's Shanghainese is similar to hers in the word pronunciations.

She's speaking Mandarin with Shanghainese pronunciation. Shanghainese doesn't use "women“ for "we"; it uses "ala".

[hkenneth]

我們 is 文讀 in Shanghainese, for formal situations. 阿拉 or 我伲 are 白讀 in Shanghainese, as the native words of the Wu Language. This is so-called 文白異讀, a phenomenon also seen in Japanese.