Mandarin/Shanghainese hiphop...

[ala]

amateur (computer, microphone) rap

LydaQ + DWID "Sorrow"

download: http://zanhe.com/lyda_q_sorrow.mp3 4mb, 4:16

First half in Mandarin (male and female), second half (at 2:45) in Shanghainese (female).

[geek_frappa]

it's pretty good for amateur. however, the use of the phrase "f*ck you" is often mis-used in chinese rap, IMHO. :-) this is quite promising if amateurs can create this type of recording...

[gato]

I think he said "这首歌献给所有的拜金女，we f* you all, 更需要献给那些曾经被她们受害的男人们“. He wants to f* some golddiggers. Slightly non-idiomatic, but he knows what's up. Could only catch about 1/2 of the Shanghainese. I'm out of practice. I heard LydaQ say "Gucci" and "shopping".

[geek_frappa]

i know... what i mean is that he should have said ... "f*ck y'all" (meaning f*ck all of you)...

[ala]

i know... what i mean is that he should have said ... "f*ck y'all" (meaning f*ck all of you)...

Um, I think that's what he said.... "f you all".

[painkillermag]

Can you give me a band info of them incl. line up and discography etc.? I'd like to put them on my web: http://www.rockinchina.com

[geek_frappa]

Um, I think that's what he said.... "f you all".

in rap music, it should be (IMHO) "f*ck y'all".... (without pronouncing the "you")

now that i think about it, i think i will love teaching english in china ...

跟著我說: f*ck y'all

[gato]

How do you say that in Mandarin?

[geek_frappa]

How do you say that in Mandarin?

.. uh... who wants to know?

LydaQ + DWID "Sorrow"

download: http://zanhe.com/lyda_q_sorrow.mp3 4mb, 4:16

Is Wu Chinese a dialect? I've listened to this song 20 times. Wu Chinese sounds so foreign to me... I can only understand a few words. Do you have lyrics to this song? Maybe I can practice singing it and record my own?

[Quest]

Is Wu Chinese a dialect? I've listened to this song 20 times. Wu Chinese sounds so foreign to me... I can only understand a few words. Do you have lyrics to this song? Maybe I can practice singing it and record my own?

Much of this song is in Mandarin. Any Chinese dialect other than your own or mandarin would probably sound foreign and unintelligible, especially in a song. In writing, however, the similarities become very apparent.

[geek_frappa]

http://www.zanhe.com/l1.html <--- do you have anything slower?

[geek_frappa]

Much of this song is in Mandarin.

i think you explained that in your initial post on this thread.

Any Chinese dialect other than your own or mandarin would probably sound foreign and unintelligible, especially in a song.

hmm... perhaps Wu is not worth my time. from my experience, native speakers often have hard time teaching it and many professors don't learn it. on the other hand, the people who cannot learn it may be stupid. i would fall into that category.. and all the engineers i know in shanghai speak Mandarin. so it may be just a good hobby... huh...

[Quest]

You are confusing me and ala.

[ala]

Yeah, in writing about 80% the same.

Wu dialects are hard because the tones are like a slippery fish (you have to learn the 詞 and not the 字), the actual pronunciation is often pretty close to Mandarin (usually like a reduced/truncated form of Mandarin pronunciation). Westerners really should have no problem with tones in Shanghainese, but many Chinese find the Shanghainese tones to be ridiculously elusive to master. Also hard is that Northern Wu has no diphthongs (like the sounds /ai/, /ei/, /au/, /ou/ etc), so there are quite a few close sounding monophthong vowels (some very foreign, like the German /ø/, French nasal /a~/ etc).

A spectrum of tone systems for Chinese dialects:

(no tone sandhi) Cantonese - Hakka - Mandarin - Xiang - Min - Wu (extreme tone sandhi).

People who speak Min dialects would find the Wu tones to be more conceptually familiar (although much more simplified and systematic than Min). Cantonese and Mandarin speakers would find the Wu tonal system to be quite alien ("non-Chinese"). In Cantonese one to two tones are "fixed" to a character, and rarely does the tone ever change for that character; hence Cantonese romanizations are straightfoward with a number after each syllable. Those complaining about Mandarin's qingsheng 轻声 (neutral tone) will be shocked to hear that Shanghainese's syllables are practically ALL qingsheng with a few "accented" syllables (hence the reverse of Mandarin). The closest relative to Shanghainese's tonal system is standard Japanese.

Practically every Shanghainese can speak very good Mandarin, so if you want to learn it, it's mainly because of personal interest.

But only about half of Shanghainese use Mandarin at the workplace. I remember just a couple of years ago, the bank tellers, bus/taxi drivers, phone operators, cashiers, nurses and doctors all used Shanghainese at first sight, but now there is a rule for these people to first speak in Mandarin and if that person responds in Shanghainese, then change to Shanghainese.

[wushijiao]

Wu (extreme tone sandhi).

Doesn't Jin also have insane tone sandhi? Tone sandhi is just one aspect of learning Chinese that makes me throw up the white flag.

Practically every Shanghainese can speak very good Mandarin, so if you want to learn it, it's mainly because of personal interest.

I'd say another reason to learn it is that Shanghaiese people seem to speak a hybrid of both Putonghua and Shanghaiese. For example, recently I was helping my friend by interpurting for a friend (who had been run over by a car and broke his arm). There was a Shanghaiese doctor and a Shanghaiese lawyer, both of which spoke perfect Putonghua. I'd say their conversation was 80% Putonghua, put they'd throw in a few words and phrases of Shanghaiese whenever appropriate.

[ala]

Doesn't Jin also have insane tone sandhi?

Nothing like Wu dialects. But Shanghainese tone sandhi is extremely regular and simple, it's just very very extensive (every word and every syllable has tone sandhi). You have to forget about characters and just memorize the pronunciation of each whole word and gradually you have a feel for it. It's the same thing as English phoTOgraphy and PHOto (stress accent on capitalized letters), only much more regular in Shanghainese.

I'd say another reason to learn it is that Shanghaiese people seem to speak a hybrid of both Putonghua and Shanghaiese. For example, recently I was helping my friend by interpurting for a friend (who had been run over by a car and broke his arm). There was a Shanghaiese doctor and a Shanghaiese lawyer, both of which spoke perfect Putonghua. I'd say their conversation was 80% Putonghua, put they'd throw in a few words and phrases of Shanghaiese whenever appropriate.

That's what we call 吴普 or 沪普. I do it all the time, make up fake putonghua words from the Shanghainese and think I am speaking proper putonghua.

[ala]

Doesn't Jin also have insane tone sandhi? Tone sandhi is just one aspect of learning Chinese that makes me throw up the white flag.

Personally I think it's much easier to memorize an accent pattern of a whole word in Shanghainese than the individual tones of each character in a word as you have to do in Mandarin and Cantonese. 2/3 of Shanghainese words all have the same pattern: Low-High-Low-Low.