Good Shanghainese Learning Materials: 学说上海话

[wushijiao]

I've been trying (half-heartedly) to learn Shanghaihua for quite a while. I recently found a pretty good VCD to study from- 学说上海话：速成版: Learn Shanghai Language. It's basically just two VCD's with common dialogues. They say it once in Mandarin, then again in Shanghaihua. They say it fairly slowly, and then at the end of the lesson they say the dialogue at regular speed.

I've been making a tiny bit of progress in my Shanghaihua (which isn't hard because I was starting at nothing!), mainly due to these VCD's, and some of my friendly co-workers.

For the life of me I can't remember where I bought it (probably at some bookstore near Fuzhou Lu). Anyway, it's "Shanghai Listen Audio & Video CO. LTD"., phone number is: (021) 62991180 and fax (021) 62991179.

[florazheng]

Why do you want to learn the dialect? Most Shanghainese can speak mandarine except a few the elder?

[HashiriKata]

Most Shanghainese can speak mandarine except a few the elder?

Even so, I'd personally want to understand what's going on around me and what people are saying around me. It'd also be nice to be able to say something in the local dialect to the people I know. (I assume wushijiao is working in Shanghai).

[wushijiao]

Even so, I'd personally want to understand what's going on around me and what people are saying around me. It'd also be nice to be able to say something in the local dialect to the people I know.

That's the basic idea.

(I assume wushijiao is working in Shanghai).

Yes.

By the way, I went to the book store on Fuzhou Lu last weekend, and saw that they did have these VCDs.

[florazheng]

I wouldn't like to spend my time/ money on learning dialect epecially though I think it is interesting to learn the local people and communicate with them by dialect.

Sometimes I just learn dialect for fun.

I prefer learning other foreign languages. They are more interesting and useful.

[ala]

Why do you want to learn the dialect? Most Shanghainese can speak mandarine except a few the elder?

(I'm going to yy below, so bare with me.)

Many Shanghainese youths can speak English too. Why do foreigners want to bother with learning Mandarin then?

Sometimes there are reasons beyond just the purely utilitarian for learning a language or taking on a hobby, etc. But some people just don't seem to understand, and that's okay too.

[Gary Soup]

Even so, I'd personally want to understand what's going on around me and what people are saying around me. It'd also be nice to be able to say something in the local dialect to the people I know.

It's also interesting to know what people are saying about you. When I ride a bus in Shanghai, I find it amusing to hear people comment about what a cheapskate I must be (since a laowai could obviously afford to take a taxi). I doubt that they would make the same comments in Mandarin, because it wouldn't be unusual it a foreigner undrstood Mandarin. But Shanghainese? That puts me in the same category as a talking dog.

[Harvey]

How difficult was it to pick up Shanghainese after living in Shanghai for some time guys?

[sky888]

My sisterinlaws father is from Shanghai and he will speak Shanghaihua to me for fun just because I like to listen to it. I don't get to experience it that much but based on what I have heard it is quite a bit different from Mandarin. My wife is from Sichuan. Just from the years of listening to Sichuanhua, the differences I feel are just subtle tone differences and small word replacements. Once I tune in, is very easy for me to understand. The thing is when I speak Mandarin to them and I screw up tones, they laugh and say I am speaking perfect Sichuanhua. Even though my wife is from Sichuan, when we jump in a taxi together or when we are out in a store in Sichuan, people automatically assume that we are not from the area and automatically speak Mandarin to us. I like when that happens. I just wish her family would speak more Mandarin when we are home though. But I guess that's like asking a Texan to loose his accent when I'm talking to him.

[Harvey]

I have heard that the difference between Mandarin and Shanghai-nese is more than just a slip of pronounciation, or something with different tones. I heard that every single character was pronounced completely different, and that for some words Pinying representations were even impossible.

It's not that different?

[ala]

I have heard that the difference between Mandarin and Shanghai-nese is more than just a slip of pronounciation, or something with different tones. I heard that every single character was pronounced completely different, and that for some words Pinying representations were even impossible.

For the average Mandarin speaker, Shanghainese is pretty impossible to learn, especially to speak. Learning to understand takes at least a year or two, learning to speak fluently and effortlessly takes a decade. Younger children learn it quicker though. The flow and feel is very different from Mandarin, it's hard to pinpoint a syllable in Shanghainese, so you kind of just have to learn from scratch as you would for an European language, and learn the pronunciation of whole WORDS and not each character.

Sky888 was talking about Sichuan-hua, Sichuan-hua is a form of Mandarin, so of course it's easy to understand.

[laohu489]

Shanghai dialect is not easy to learn. I am satisfied if I can understand what a taxi cab driver and my gf say to each other and this is after almost three years. Aside from the gf/ bf route in learning Shanghai dialect and some websites, I have been using 上海话熟语, 叶世荪编著．ISBN 7806618457 and another book which I cannot currently find. Its OK cause the book is not that good but it does have IPA pronunciation.

[AlanMN]

I agree Shanghainese sounds really different from putonghua (Mandarin).

I have a friend from Shanghai whose father is Chinese and mother Japanese. When I heard her talking to her mother on the phone I thought she was talking Japanese (except I couldn't recognise any Japanese words!) because it was so different. That was before I knew there was such a thing a Shanghainese.

I heard there are 70 millions Shanghainese speakers, so for a minority language that is quite a lot.

However, I must learn Mandarin properly before attempting anything else!

[dalaowai]

The main reason that foreigners learn Shanghainese is to do business. Connections and friendships will grow if you can even speak a sentence in Shanghainese.

It also helps to know 外国人 in shanghainese, then you know when to tune in to what they're saying. Let me tell you, they're not shy to say stuff in front of you in Shanghainese thinking that you don't understand a thing.

[sky888]

hahaha...thx ala...I was hoping that Harvey would reread my post and edit his.

[woliveri]

Here's a site which gives some audio differences between common Mandarin phrazes and Shanghai hua:

http://www.sinosplice.com/chinese/dialects/

[tradinup]

The grammar structure seems different; maybe someone can explain it to me.. eg.

你吃饭了吗？(ni chi fan le ma?)

SH: nong ve chi le va?

[Gary Soup]

Actually, all of the Shanghainese people I know say "Chi gu le va?"

[ala]

The grammar structure seems different; maybe someone can explain it to me.. eg.

你吃饭了吗？(ni chi fan le ma?)

SH: nong ve chi le va?

That site is wrong' date=' "Non Vae chiele va?" does not mean "Eaten yet?" in Shanghainese.

Gary Soup though is right on the money.

General structure in Shanghainese for this type of sentence:

[b'](TOPIC)-SUBJECT-OBJECT-VERB-INTERR[/b]

non = you (SUBJECT)

Vae = food (OBJECT)

chie = to eat (VERB)

leila = to be, to exist (AUX VERB)

va = interrogative particle

cintsau = today; cintsaughe = today's

ne = topic marker

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?)

etc, etc...

Aspects are more complex in Shanghainese than in Mandarin.

BTW, the recording in the Sinosplice site isn't very good, she has an awkward accent, not flowing at all

[dongdong]

I have a friend from Shanghai whose father is Chinese and mother Japanese. When I heard her talking to her mother on the phone I thought she was talking Japanese (except I couldn't recognise any Japanese words!) because it was so different. That was before I knew there was such a thing a Shanghainese.

That's true. Shanghainese is very similar in rhythm and pronunciation to Japanese. That makes a Shanghainese much easier than people from other parts of China to speak Japanese. Many Japanese phonetics that don't exist in Mandarin do exist in Shanghainese. So when you have difficulties to write down Shanghainese using pinyin or IPA, hiragana will help a lot... I am from Shanghai and i learned some Japanese myself for fun - for the pronunciation part it was just so natural for me to start speaking without any exercise.

Actually we also make jokes about the similarity between Shanghainese and Japanese. You can make up funny sentences in Shanghainese, which sound like nothing else but a Japanese sentence.