Films and TV series done in dialects, regionalects, accents and other 话's

[wushijiao]

As an outgrowth of this rant , I decided to try to investigate movies and television programs in spoken in dialects and regionalects. For the sake of this discussion, this will include everything except stuff done in standard Putonghua and Cantonese. No offense to either Putonghua or Cantonese, but one can go to any DVD rack in China, or Blockbuster in America, and easily get stuff in these two 话’s.

Supporting dialects is advantageous in many ways, to both individual laowais learning Mandarin and to Chinese society at large.

Firstly, I believe listening to non-standard Mandarin and dialects can help attune one’s ear to understanding a wider variety of Mandarin. Of course, when starting out, one should listen to standard Putonghua over and over until the correct spoken way is beaten into one’s head. But after that, one should be exposed to a variety of accents and speaking styles. All other things being equal, who will have better overall listening comprehension- 1) a student of English that has only listened to news broadcasts (written English being spoken, using formal and proper accents) or 2) a student of English that has listened to Australian English, all sorts of British English, Scottish, Indian English, English from the American South, Cockney, Ebonics…etc. Obviously the latter will cope better with difficult and new accents and speaking styles. The person who has listened to a wide range of accents will also be better at picking up connected speech (“Did you”- “Didjya” 不知道- bu’erdao)

Secondly, supporting the dialects increases the cultural pluralism in China. Whether the linguistic policies to support Mandarin have been correct or not is not in the realm of this discussion. It’s safe to say that Mandarin, at this point in 2005, will only increase in its usage. In my view, this is desirable, but it by no means should exclude the usage of dialects.

Most jokes that don’t involve a swift kick to the balls, or some other form of stupid and hilarious slapstick, are funny because of words and the unique delivery of the speaker. Think of your own country’s best comedians. All of them, even if they can speak in a socially valued way, draw upon the way normal folks speak in order to create their art. I think Robin Williams in the US is a good example. He can draw from dozens of regional accents and speaking styles to create his comedy. The same works for Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers (Canadian)…etc. The point is, without allowing dialects to flourish, drama and the arts in most of China will remain artificially suppressed. Allowing people to speak creatively in their own dialects is crucial for sustaining a cultural renaissance.

Thirdly, supporting and promoting cultural products can help decrease prejudice. This sounds a bit too hippy-ish and idealistic, but if everyone could acknowledge the right of people to make art in their form of speech, which has intrinsic worth, people won’t feel ashamed to speak in their “unstandard” way. Affirmation of linguistic worth is perhaps a first step to breaking stereotypes about regions; similarly, it will decrease individuals’ feelings of embarrassment of speaking a “gutter” dialect.

With all that in mind, I hope we can create a big list of movies and TV series in dialects. I’ll start with a few ones that I know of:

Movies

盲井- 河南话- This movie explores the lives of coal miners

贾樟柯’s films (小武, 站台, 任逍遥, 世界)- 山西话 These movies depict life of down-and-outers in Shanxi. The spoken form might be considered so extremely incomprehensible that it might be worth slapping the language label 晋语, on it. I don’t know?

TV Series

东北一家人—东北话- I bought this comedy as a joke. But I’ve actually watched almost 40 episodes. It’s a bit like the classic American family sit-coms of old.

西安虎家- 陕西话- I’ve bought this but have yet to watch it.

红茶房- 上海话- This is a sit-com about people sitting around in a café. It seems low budget, but seems to be fairly funny and popular with the locals.

What other movies or TV series can you add?

[geraldc]

Well I think there are a couple of TV stations in Taiwan where the majority of their output is in Taiwanese or Hakka

[Outofin]

Lao She 老舍 (1899～1966) is recognized the best writer of Beijing dialect. He was a Manchu and born poor. He was a unique writer in his time for his focus on ordinary people in lower classes and writing in their vivid language. His works included novels, stage plays and prose. If you’re interested in the pre-PRC China, you can not miss Lao She.

His classic pieces were already made on TV and film, but I don’t think if there’s any recent remake. But 茶馆 should be a reserved play in 人艺 over years.

Some keywords for online research: 老舍, 猫城记, 骆驼祥子, 茶馆, 四世同堂.

[gato]

秋菊打官司 ("The Story of Qiu Ju"), directed by Zhang Yimou, starring Gong Li, is also entirely in a non-Putonghua dialect. I don't know which dialect it is. I had to read the subtitles.

[in_lab]

I agree that listening to different varieties of English will help you understand different varieties of English, but are you saying that listening to Hakka television will improve one's Mandarin?

[Gary Soup]

秋菊打官司 ("The Story of Qiu Ju"), directed by Zhang Yimou, starring Gong Li, is also entirely in a non-Putonghua dialect. I don't know which dialect it is. I had to read the subtitles.

According to Zhang Yimou,

The Story of Qiu Ju was a work of realism. At that time, I wanted to make a movie with the feel of a documentary. That's why I had Gong Li speak in the Xian dialect. Many people opposed using the star Gong Li in this film. They claimed that using a new actress would give the film a touch of realism for a documentary. But I had a deep understanding of Gong Li. First, she spoke good Xian dialect. During the filming of Red Sorghum, every film crew was from Xian, and Gong Li argued with the film crew in the Xian dialect.

Source:http://www.city.fukuoka.jp/asiaprize/english/lecture/pdf/13_zhang.pdf

[Gary Soup]

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Flowers of Shanhai (Hai Shang Hua) was almost entirely in Shanghainese (with varying degrees of success by different actors).

Of course, Shanghainese is a language, not a dialect

[wushijiao]

I guess a lot of those early Zhang Yimou movies are in 陕西话.

I agree that listening to different varieties of English will help you understand different varieties of English, but are you saying that listening to Hakka television will improve one's Mandarin?

Well, I doubt listening to Hakka will help very much, if at all, in directly helping one's Putonghua. So, from a helping-one's-Putonghua-ability point of view, I suppose one should maybe differentiate Mandarin based dialects (like 河南话) from other languages, such as Hakka, Wu...etc.

But with that said, I notice that many Shanghainese tend to freely speak a mix of Shanghainese and Mandarin, flowing back from one to the other. For example, I was once translating for an American friend that had been hit by a car. The lawyer and doctor were both Shanghainese and both very well educated. They spoke to each other in a mix of standard Putonghua and Shanghainese, using whatver word made the most sense. I think this officially known as "code switching" in linguistics. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

So, I do think that "having a ear" for the way the local dialect sounds might help carry over into helping one's "locally accented" Putonghua listening comprehension.

[Lu]

There are many, many soap operas in Taiwanese (and probably also in Hakka, but I didn't see those) in Taiwan. And also movies in Taiwanese, I saw one called something like River of Sadness (forgot the exact title).

[bhchao]

Lu, are you referring to A City of Sadness? It was directed by Hou Hsiao Hsien. He has a new movie called Three Times, and it will be the opening film of this year's Pusan Film Festival in October.

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/culture/200509/kt2005090620263611690.htm

Three Times seems rather interesting. It is a three-segmented love story set in 1911, 1966, and 2005, and stars Shu Qi and Chang Chen, the actor from Crouching Tiger. I'm not sure if it is spoken in Mandarin or Taiwanese.

[Lu]

No, the movie I meant is something like 'river of sadness', not 'city'. It's about a guy who leaves his hometown (near a river) to play trumpet in a troupe of actors, and then he gets TBC, and in the end he dies, very sad. And all in Taiwanese.

Is City of Sadness also in Taiwanese then?

[bhchao]

City of Sadness is spoken in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Japanese, and Shanghainese. There is a lot of historical content in this movie, and the story is centered on a deaf-mute son played by Tony Leung.

[laohu489]

Shanghai Panic 我们还怕 starring everyones favorite Mian Mian 面面 is in Shanghai dialect as well. It has a lot of terms that will be hard to learn from other sources. he he he. Good luck finding it though.

[Ian_Lee]

Actually a lot of good movies in Putonghua and Cantonese cannot be found in Blockbuster or even in HK.

I have been trying hard to find those movies made by 電懋 -- the big movie studio that rivalled Shaw Brothers in 50s -- 60s which produced hundreds of marvellous Mandarin language films.

But so far I don't have any luck.

And for the Cantonese language films, I also try to locate the film which Bruce Lee (when he was a kid) had a role in it.