Shanghainese

The speech of Shanghai had long been influenced by those dialects spoken about Jiaxing and Suzhou. Suzhounese literature, Chuanqi, Tanci, and folk songs all influenced early Shanghainese. During the 1850s, the port of Shanghai was opened, and a large number of migrants, particularly from Ningbo and the Jianghuai area, entered the city. Around this time, missionaries such as Joseph Edkins and Tarleton Perry Crawford would document the phonology of the language. This led to many loanwords from both the West and the East, especially from Ningbonese, and like Cantonese in Hong Kong, English. In fact, "speakers of other Wu dialects traditionally treat the Shanghai vernacular somewhat contemptuously as a mixture of Suzhou and Ningbo dialects." This has led to Shanghainese becoming one of the fastest-developing languages of the Wu Chinese subgroup, undergoing rapid changes and quickly replacing Suzhounese as the prestige dialect of the Yangtze River Delta region. It underwent sustained growth that reached a peak in the 1930s during the Republican era, when migrants arrived in Shanghai and immersed themselves in the local tongue. Migrants from Shanghai also brought Shanghainese to many overseas Chinese communities. As of 2016, 83,400 people in Hong Kong are still able to speak Shanghainese. Shanghainese is sometimes viewed as a tool to discriminate against immigrants. Migrants who move from other Chinese cities to Shanghai have little ability to speak Shanghainese. Among the migrant people, some believe Shanghainese represents the superiority of native Shanghainese people. Some also believe that native residents intentionally speak Shanghainese in some places to discriminate against the immigrant population to transfer their anger to migrant workers, who take over their homeland and take advantage of housing, education, medical, and job resources. After the People's Republic of China's government imposed and promoted Standard Chinese as the official language of all of China, Shanghainese had started its decline. During the reform and opening up of 1978, Shanghai has once again taken in a large number of migrants. Due to the prominence of Standard Mandarin, learning Shanghainese was no longer necessary for migrants. However, Shanghainese remained a vital part of the city's culture and retained its prestige status within the local population. In the 1990s, it was still common for local radio and television broadcasts to be in Shanghainese. For example, in 1995, the TV series Sinful Debt featured extensive Shanghainese dialogue; when it was broadcast outside Shanghai (mainly in adjacent Wu-speaking areas) Mandarin subtitles were added. The Shanghainese TV series Lao Niang Jiu (, "Old Uncle") was broadcast from 1995 to 2007; it was popular among Shanghainese residents. Shanghainese programming has since slowly declined amid regionalist-localist accusations. From 1992 onward, Shanghainese use was discouraged in schools, and many children native to Shanghai can no longer speak Shanghainese. In addition, Shanghai's emergence as a cosmopolitan global city consolidated the status of Mandarin as the standard language of business and services, at the expense of the local language. Since 2005, movements to protect Shanghainese have emerged. At municipal legislative discussions in 2005, former Shanghai opera actress Ma Lili moved to "protect" the language, stating that she was one of the few remaining Shanghai opera actresses who still retained authentic classic Shanghainese pronunciation in their performances. Shanghai's former party boss Chen Liangyu, a native Shanghainese himself, reportedly supported her proposal. Professor Qian Nairong, linguist and head of the Chinese Department at Shanghai University, is working on efforts to save the language. In response to criticism, Qian reminds people that Shanghainese was once fashionable, saying, "the popularization of Mandarin doesn't equal the ban of dialects. It doesn't make Mandarin a more civilized language either. Promoting dialects is not a narrow-minded localism, as it has been labeled by some netizens". Qian has also urged for Shanghainese to be taught in other sectors of education, due to kindergarten and university courses being insufficient. During the 2010s, many achievements have been made to preserve Shanghainese. In 2011, Hu Baotan wrote Longtang (, "Longtang"), the first ever Shanghainese novel. In June 2012, a new television program airing in Shanghainese was created. In 2013, buses in Shanghai started using Shanghainese broadcasts. In 2017, Apple's iOS 11 introduced Siri in Shanghainese, being only the third Sinitic language to be supported, after Standard Mandarin and Cantonese. In 2018, the Japanese-Chinese animated anthology drama film Flavors of Youth had a section set in Shanghai, with significant Shanghainese dialogue. In January 2019, singer Lin Bao released the first Shanghainese pop record Shanghai Yao (, "Shanghai Ballad"). In December 2021, the Shanghainese-language romantic comedy movie Myth of Love () was released. Its box office revenue was ¥260 million, and response was generally positive. Similarly, in December 2023, the TV show Blossoms Shanghai () aired with the primary language being Shanghainese. Today, around half the population of Shanghai can converse in Shanghainese, and a further quarter can understand it. Though the number of speakers has been declining, a large number of people want to preserve it. == Status ==

Due to the large number of ethnic groups of China, efforts to establish a common language have been attempted many times. Therefore, the language issue has always been an important part of Beijing's rule. Other than the government language-management efforts, the rate of rural-to-urban migration in China has also accelerated the shift to Standard Chinese and the disappearance of native languages and dialects in the urban areas. As more people moved into Shanghai, the economic center of China, Shanghainese has been threatened despite it originally being a strong topolect of Wu Chinese. According to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, the population of Shanghai was estimated to be 24.28 million in 2019, of whom 14.5 million are permanent residents and 9.77 million are migrant residents. To have better communication with foreign residents and develop a top-level financial center among the world, the promotion of the official language, Standard Mandarin, became very important. Therefore, the Shanghai Municipal Government banned the use of Shanghainese in public places, schools, and work. A survey of students from the primary school in 2010 indicated that 52.3% of students believed Mandarin is easier than Shanghainese for communication, and 47.6% of the students choose to speak Mandarin because it is a mandatory language at school. Furthermore, 68.3% of the students are more willing to study Mandarin, but only 10.2% of the students are more willing to study Shanghainese. A survey in 2021 has shown that 15.22% of respondents under 18 would never use Shanghainese. The study also found that the percentage of people that would use Shanghainese with older family members has halved. The study also shows that around one third of people under the age of 30 can only understand Shanghainese, and 8.7% of respondents under 18 cannot even understand it. The number of people that are able to speak Shanghainese has also consistently decreased. Much of the youth can no longer speak Shanghainese fluently because they had no chance to practice it at school. Also, they were unwilling to communicate with their parents in Shanghainese, which has accelerated its decline. The survey in 2010 indicated that 62.6% of primary school students use Mandarin as the first language at home, but only 17.3% of them use Shanghainese to communicate with their parents. == Classification ==

Shanghainese macroscopically is spoken in Shanghai and parts of eastern Nantong, and constitutes the Shanghai subranch of the Northern Wu family of Wu Chinese. Some linguists group Shanghainese with nearby varieties, such as Huzhounese and Suzhounese, which has about 73% lexical similarity with Standard Mandarin, into a branch known as Suhujia (), due to them sharing many phonological, lexical, and grammatical similarities. Newer varieties of Shanghainese, however, have been influenced by standard Chinese as well as Cantonese and other varieties, making the Shanghainese idiolects spoken by young people in the city different from that spoken by the older population. Also, the practice of inserting Mandarin into Shanghainese conversations is very common, at least for young people. Like most subdivisions of Chinese, it is easier for a local speaker to understand Mandarin than it is for a Mandarin speaker to understand the local language. It is also of note that Shanghainese, like other Northern Wu languages, is not mutually intelligible with Southern Wu languages like Taizhounese and Wenzhounese. Shanghainese as a branch of Northern Wu can be further subdivided. The details are as follows: • Urban branch () – what "Shanghainese" tends to refer to. Occupies the city centre of Shanghai, generally on the west bank of the Huangpu River. This can also be further divided into Old, Middle, and New Periods, as well as an emerging Newest Period. The following are often collectively known as Bendihua (, Shanghainese: , Wugniu: pen-di ghe-gho) • Jiading branch () – spoken in the most of Jiading and Baoshan. • Liantang branch () – spoken in the southwestern ends of Qingpu. • Chongming branch () – spoken in the islands of Hengsha, Changxing and Chongming, as well as the eastern parts of Nantong. Also instead analysed to be part of the Shadi () dialect continuum, along with varieties in nearby counties such as Haimen. • Songjiang branch () – spoken in all other parts of Shanghai, which can be further divided into the following: :* Pudong subbranch () – spoken in all parts of the east bank of the Huangpu River, taking up most of the Pudong district. :* Shanghai subbranch () – spoken in the rest of the peripheral areas of the city center, namely southern Jiading and Baoshan, as well as northern Minhang. :* Songjiang subbranch () – spoken in the rest of Shanghai. Named after the Songjiang district. == Phonology ==

Following conventions of Chinese syllable structure, Shanghainese syllables can be divided into initials and finals. The initial occupies the first part of the syllable. The final occupies the second part of the syllable and can be divided further into an optional medial and an obligatory rime (sometimes spelled rhyme). Tone is also a feature of the syllable in Shanghainese. Syllabic tone, which is typical to the other Sinitic languages, has largely become verbal tone in Shanghainese. Initials The following is a list of all initials in Middle Period Shanghainese, as well as the Wugniu romanisation and example characters. Shanghainese has a set of tenuis, lenis and fortis plosives and affricates, as well as a set of voiceless and voiced fricatives. Alveolo-palatal initials are also present in Shanghainese. Voiced stops are phonetically voiceless with slack voice phonation in stressed, word initial position. This phonation (often referred to as murmur) also occurs in zero onset syllables, syllables beginning with fricatives, and syllables beginning with sonorants. These consonants are true voiced in intervocalic position. Sonorants are also suggested to be glottalised in dark tones (i.e. tones 1, 5, 7). Finals Being a Wu language, Shanghainese has a large array of vowel sounds. The following is a list of all possible finals in Middle Period Shanghainese, as well as the Wugniu romanisation and example characters. The transcriptions used above are broad and the following points are of note when pertaining to actual pronunciation: • is enunciated with any part of the tongue, and is therefore in free variation as . • is often rounded into . • The in and are often lowered to , whereas the in and are often lowered to . • is pronounced as after labials and alveolars, whereas it is after glottal and alveolo-palatal initials. • High vowels in front of can undergo breaking. • can be merged into , resulting in one fewer rime. • Rimes with final are often simply realised with a shortened vowel nucleus when they are not utterance-final. • Lips are not significantly rounded in rounded vowels, and not significantly unrounded in unrounded ones. • are similar in pronunciation, differing slightly in lip rounding and height ( respectively). are also similar in pronunciation, differing slightly in vowel height ( respectively). • Medial is pronounced before rounded vowels. The Middle Chinese nasal rimes are all merged in Shanghainese. Middle Chinese rimes have become glottal stops, . Tones Shanghainese has five phonetically distinguishable tones for single syllables said in isolation. These tones are illustrated below in tone numbers. In terms of Middle Chinese tone designations, the dark tone category has three tones (dark rising and dark departing tones have merged into one tone), while the light category has two tones (the light level, rising and departing tones have merged into one tone). The checked tones are shorter, and describe those rimes which end in a glottal stop . That is, both the yin–yang distinction and the checked tones are allophonic (dependent on syllabic structure). With this analysis, Shanghainese has only a two-way phonemic tone contrast, falling vs rising, and then only in open syllables with voiceless initials. Therefore, many romanisations of Shanghainese opt to only mark the dark level tone, usually with a diacritic such as an acute accent or grave accent. Tone sandhi Tone sandhi is a process whereby adjacent tones undergo dramatic alteration in connected speech. Similar to other Northern Wu dialects, Shanghainese is characterized by two forms of tone sandhi: a word tone sandhi and a phrasal tone sandhi. Word tone sandhi in Shanghainese can be described as left-prominent and is characterized by a dominance of the first syllable over the contour of the entire tone domain. As a result, the underlying tones of syllables other than the leftmost syllable, have no effect on the tone contour of the domain. The pattern is generally described as tone spreading (1, 5, 6, 7) or tone shifting (8, except for 4-syllable compounds, which can undergo spreading or shifting). The table below illustrates possible tone combinations. As an example, in isolation, the two syllables of the word / (China) are pronounced with a dark level tone (tsón) and dark checked tone (koq): and . However, when pronounced in combination, the dark level tone of (tsón) spreads over the compound resulting in the following pattern . Similarly, the syllables in the common expression / (zeq-sé-ti, "foolish") have the following underlying phonemic and tonal representations: (zeq), (sé), and (ti). However, the syllables in combination exhibit the light checked shifting pattern where the first syllable's toneme overrides that of the following syllables: . For instance, when combined, / (ma, , "to buy") and (cieu, , "wine") become ("to buy wine"). Sometimes meaning can change based on whether left-prominent or right-prominent sandhi is used. For example, (tshau, , "to fry") and / (mi, , "noodle") when pronounced (i.e., with left-prominent sandhi) means "fried noodles". When pronounced (i.e., with right-prominent sandhi), it means "to fry noodles". {{fs interlinear |indent=2 |glossing4=yes In the previous example sentence we see an adjective, noun and pronoun starting sandhi chains, the particles , and / being incorporated into other sandhi chains, and the particle having a neutral tone. == Vocabulary ==

Note: Chinese characters for Shanghainese are not standardized and those chosen are those recommended in . IPA transcription is for the Middle Period of modern Shanghainese (), pronunciation of those between 20 and 60 years old. Due to the large number of migrants into Shanghai, its lexicon is less noticeably Wu, though it still retains many defining features. However, many of these now lost features can be found in lects spoken in suburban Shanghai. Its basic negator is (veq), Shanghainese also has a multitude of loan words from European languages, due to Shanghai's status as a major port in China. Most of these terms come from English, though there are some from other languages such as French. Some terms, such as , have even entered mainstream and other Sinitic languages, such as Sichuanese. Common words and phrases : For more terms, see Shanghainese Swadesh list on Wiktionary. Literary and vernacular pronunciations Like other Sinitic languages, Shanghainese exhibits a difference between expected vernacular pronunciations, and literary pronunciations taken from the Mandarinic lingua franca of the time, be it Nanjingese, Hangzhounese, or Beijingese. These readings must be distinguished in vocabulary. Take for instance the following. Some terms mix the two pronunciation types, such as / ("university"), where is literary (da) and / is colloquial (ghoq). == Grammar ==

Like other Sinitic languages, Shanghainese is an isolating language that lacks marking for tense, person, case, number or gender. Similarly, there is no distinction for tense or person in verbs, with word order and particles generally expressing these grammatical characteristics. There are, however, three important derivational processes in Shanghainese. However, some analyses do suggest that one can analyse Shanghainese to have tenses. Although formal inflection is very rare in all varieties of Chinese, there does exist in Shanghainese a morpho-phonological tone sandhi that Zhu (2006) identifies as a form of inflection since it forms new words out of pre-existing phrases. This type of inflection is a distinguishing characteristic of all Northern Wu dialects. although the line between suffix and particle is somewhat nebulous. Most affixation applies to adjectives. and is the most productive method of creating new words. Word order Shanghainese adheres generally to SVO word order. The placement of objects in Wu dialects is somewhat variable, with Southern Wu varieties positioning the direct object before the indirect object, and Northern varieties (especially in the speech of younger people) favoring the indirect object before the direct object. Owing to Mandarin influence, Shanghainese usually follows the latter model. Older speakers of Shanghainese tend to place adverbs after the verb, but younger people, again under heavy influence from Mandarin, favor pre-verbal placement of adverbs. The third person singular pronoun (yi) (he/she/it) or the derived phrase / (yi kaon) ("he says") can appear at the end of a sentence. This construction, which appears to be unique to Shanghainese, is commonly employed to project the speaker's differing expectation relative to the content of the phrase. {{fs interlinear |indent=2 Nouns Except for the limited derivational processes described above, Shanghainese nouns are isolating. There is no inflection for case or number, nor is there any overt gender marking. {{fs interlinear |indent=2 There are no articles in Shanghainese, Some classifiers are based on standard measurements or containers. Classifiers can be paired with a preceding determiner (often a numeral) to form a compound that further specifies the meaning of the noun it modifies. Verbs Shanghainese verbs are analytic and as such do not undergo any sort of conjugation to express tense or person. However, the language does have a richly developed aspect system, expressed using various particles. This system has been argued to be a tense system. Aspect Some disagreement exists as to how many formal aspect categories exist in Shanghainese, and a variety of different particles can express the same aspect, with individual usage often reflecting generational divisions. Some linguists identify as few as four or six, and others up to twelve specific aspects. Zhu (2006) identifies six relatively uncontroversial aspects in Shanghainese. Progressive aspect expresses a continuous action. It is indicated by the particles (laq), (laq-laq) or (laq-he), which occur pre-verbally. is seen as dated and younger speakers often use , likely through lenition and Mandarin influence. : The durative aspect is marked post-verbally by (gho-chi), and expresses a continuous action. There are, however, several modal auxiliaries (many of which have multiple variants) that collectively express concepts of desire, conditionality, potentiality and ability. : Pronouns Personal pronouns in Shanghainese do not distinguish gender or case. Owing to its isolating grammatical structure, Shanghainese is not a pro-drop language. whereas younger speakers tend to use (aq-laq), which originates from Ningbonese. While Zhu (2006) asserts that there is no inclusive 1st person plural pronoun, as in: {{fs interlinear |indent=2 Possessive pronouns are formed via the pronominal suffix / (gheq), for instance, / (ngu gheq). This pronunciation is a glottalised lenition of the expected pronunciation, ku. Adjectives Most basic Shanghainese adjectives are monosyllabic. Like other parts of speech, adjectives do not change to indicate number, gender or case. to express degree of comparison or other changes in meaning. Thus: :: lan ("cold") :: pín-lan ("ice-cold"), where means ice :: pín-pín-lan ("cold as ice") Interrogatives The particle (va) is used to transform ordinary declarative statements into yes/no questions. This is the most common way of forming questions in Shanghainese. : Negation Nouns and verbs can be negated by the verb / (m-meq), "to not have", whereas is the basic negator. {{fs interlinear |indent=2 == Writing ==

Chinese characters are often used to write Shanghainese. Though there is no formal standardisations, there are characters recommended for use, mostly based on dictionaries. Usage of this romanization system was mainly confined to translated Bibles for use by native Shanghainese, or English–Shanghainese dictionaries, some of which also contained characters, for foreign missionaries to learn Shanghainese. A system of phonetic symbols similar to Chinese characters called "New Phonetic Character" were also developed by in the 19th century by American missionary Tarleton Perry Crawford. Since the 21st century, online dictionaries such as the Wu MiniDict and Wugniu have introduced their own Romanization schemes. Nowadays, the MiniDict and Wugniu Romanizations are the most commonly used standardized ones. Protestant missionaries in the 1800s created the Shanghainese Phonetic Symbols to write Shanghainese phonetically. The symbols are a syllabary similar to the Japanese kana system. The system has not been used and is only seen in a few historical books. == Media ==

Over the last decade, Shanghainese has become more prominent in Chinese television. Shows have increasingly included Shanghainese dialogue and/or been offered entirely in Shanghainese. However, the number of Shanghainese/Shanghai-based TV shows is still comparatively low. == See also ==