Shanghaihua 上海话 (沪语)
Table of contents
- A brief introduction
- Disclaimer
- pronunciation - an overview
- First words
Shanghai dialect, a brief introduction
Though China officially has but one spoken language[1], stemming
from Mandarin, called or «normal language», it has
nonetheless a score of dialects, most of which are still vividly used.
Shanghanese is one of them, member of a wider family, that of the 吴
dialects.
Spoken by about 80 million people throughout China mainland, hence is
dialect one of the most spoken ones in the world[2]...
To be fair, with the opening of Shanghai, still drawing more and more people like magnet, the use of Mandarin is preferred (a fortiori with aliens!). But it is easy to find programs broadcasted (on both radio and television, mostly soap-operas) in (or , language of 沪, Shanghai's region).
Disclaimer
Obviously this small webpage does not pretend to let you speak fluently
Shanghainese, nor to act as a surrogate to genuine classes.
Let's say that at least, it may help you decypher words and
common expressions and, who knows, perhaps soothe frustration not to be
able to grasp a single word out of conversations.
Mandarin will be taken as a reference so the process of memorization
may be alleviated for people already knowing bits of it —it would
be indeed quite curious starting learning Chinese language with
Shanghainese.
Though Shanghainese is actually far from being a dead language, as many
dialects, it does not really possess any literature (except using phonetic
approximation, where pronunciation is mimicked thanks to unusual characters,
some of these only being used for that purpose[3]).
This phonetic will be used in these pages, to make reading easier to
the reader already accustomed to Mandarin. One can smile at this
subversion of the written language, giving so seemingly different oral
results, albeit so close...
This page makes extensive usage of Unicode encoding (UTF-8).
To let it display nicely everything, and not let you full of small rosy
squares instead of characters ☺, a recent (shall I say decent?)
browser (Mozilla, IE, Opera) is recommended, equipped with unicode fonts.
Characters are not systematically translated (or their «orthodox» pronunciation
given), but you can use the CEDict
dictionary.
pronunciation - an overview
Generally speaking, Shanghainese has more nasal sounds than Mandarin, and compared to Mandarin finds itself closer to French sounds (对我来说).That is one reason (the other obviously is that of laziness :^) why I won't translate all the examples below. But rest assured the phonetics used are supposed to be very close to (if not the same as) international phonetics, so their use should be pretty standard even for non-French speakers.
Vowels
The only surprise (for French-speaking people) is the sound [jø]
(best represented by [ɤ]).
The way it is pronounced is quite peculiar, and the most accurate description
(quite crude) is to say the sound comes "vomited", as if belched out
from the abdomen by a spasm...
| [a] the "a" in fat [fat] |
[e] the "é" in bébé [bebe] (baby) |
[ɔ] the "o" in coq [kɔk] (cock) |
[ø] the "œu" in œufs [ø] (eggs) |
[jø] as in yeux [jø] (eyes) |
[o] the "o" in go [go] |
| [aŋ] as in gang [gaŋ] |
[əŋ] as in tungsten [təŋstεn] (*) |
[oŋ] as in ping-pong [piŋpoŋ] |
(*) [ə] is the mute "e" heard in ago [əgo].
Coming along these basic vowels, we find:
- diphtongs, combination of the precedings with [i] (heard in fit [fit]), or with [u] (heard in look [luk], but shorter —the way Chinese people pronounce "look" is, well... perfect!) etc.
- vowel [y] (heard in déjà vu (but really pronounced "à la" French) [deʒavy]). This one can also be made nasal.([yŋ]).
- For the sound pronounced roughly like [ø] (shorter) that we find in 四 ( [sɿ]), I will use [ɿ].
Consonants
A meaningful newcomer compared to Mandarin is the [v] (the "v" of view [vju:]) made distinct
from the [f]...
The semi-consonant [j] (you [ju:], annoy [ənɔj])...
The sound of "guano" [gwano] or of "wapiti" [wap'əti] will be brought to you
by [w].
I will prefer [nj] to the symbol [ɲ], to make it a little
bit easier.
[ɕ] will be used for the hissing [s] of 西 xī [ɕi] or of 气 qì [ʨi]. It will be useful to make clear between
[suan] 算 and [ɕyan] 选
(Sound [ʃ] of "ship" [ʃip] doesn't exist in Shanghainese)
.
For plosive consonants[4], we will use a single quote:
as [k'] [p'] [t'] [ts']...
Other conventions should not be problematic —all the more since
I will try as much as possible to avoid complexification with a new phonetic
symbol if another can be used instead. (e.g.:
I will use [r] for the h in pinyin).
Tones
I finish with them, as (in my opinion) their mastering is out of this page's
purpose.
Let's just say that theoretically you should add two more to those of Mandarin,
bringing the total to 6 tones.
One of these supplementary tones is a sort of fourth tone, but very short (as if
your breath were cut). It will be symbolized by [ʔ].
The second one is the opposit of the third tone in Mandarin...
It's now time to cut through this tedious (and incomplete) catalogue to go to some practice. Let's begin with what is perhaps the most useful to understand (even if hands signs can help): numbers.
First words
Numbers
| (1) 一 [ieʔ] | (2) 二 [nji] | (3) 三 [se] | (4) 四 [sɿ] | (5) 五 [ŋ] |
| (6) 六 [loʔ] | (7) 七 [tsiʔ] | (8) 八 [peʔ] | (9) 九 [ʨjø] | (10) 十 [zjeʔ] |
| (0) 零 [lin] | (100) 百 [baʔ] | (1 000) 千 [ʨi] | (10 000) 万 [ve] | (1 million) 亿 [i] |
You will notice:
- systematic use of the number "twenty" (and not, "two-ten"): 廿 [nie] for 二十.
- Depending on the context, [liaŋ] 两 will be often preferred to 二 [njiʔ] "two"...
Now, knowing that the week 星期 is said 礼拜 [lipa] ( in Mandarin), you are able to enumerate the days of the week. Monday 礼拜一 [lipajeʔ] etc. but ... pay attention to the trap for Sunday 礼拜日 [lipanjiʔ] (or 礼拜天 [lipati]) not to be mistaken for Tuesday 礼拜二 [lipanji] (or 礼拜两 [lipaliaŋ]).
Pronouns
| I | You | He (she) | We | You | They |
| 我 | 你 | 他，她，它 | 我们/咱们 | 你们 | 他们 |
| 我 [ŋwu] | 侬 [noŋ] | 伊 [ji] | 阿拉 [ala] | 亻那 [na] (*) | 伊拉 [jila] |
Now you are ready for your first words in Shanghainese.
To say «Hello» in Shanghainese: 侬好！ [noŋrɔ] (or 侬早！ [noŋtsɔ] for «good morning»).
Instead of the too posh 拜拜 («bye-bye») you will say, 再会
[tsewe] and «thanks» is 谢谢 [dzja(dz)ja].
The rest of this introduction will unfold in small lessons, as soon as I get some time to compile (and translate) them.
Next chapter
(to be continued...)
[1] - Distinction is necessary as written language is unified (if you forget
about the simplification of characters, not followed in all the diaspora).
[2] - Far before Cantonese ( 粤 family) with "only" less than 60 million
speakers (but with better global coverage).
[3] - One of the difficulties of this form of transcription is that you have to
find characters with similar meaning, but also to make sure they don't find pronounced
in another fashion in Shanghainese.
For instance, to replace 的, we generally use 格 pronounced
[kəʔ],... but not in 好格！ pronounced [rɔh'e].
Same with 合 pronounced in Shanghainese [h'e] in
合理 , but [kəʔ] in 合算 —the second
pronunciation is the most frequent, the other is more "literary".
[4] - Speaker familiar with Mandarin will notice there are some novelties:
Shanghainese has a [b], [p], and a [p'] as well as a [g], [k] and a [k'].
Cette page n'est *pas* (ou alors c'est un fichu coup de bol) valide de quelque standard que ce soit.
Non mais. Dictateurs.