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In Shanghai, Shanghainese v. Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| audiophile Groupie United States Joined 5120 days ago 44 posts - 81 votes  Studies: French | Message 9 of 22 03 June 2011 at 8:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I was grown up Shanghai. You definitely only need to learn Mandarin. Once upon time,
local Shanghainess regard themselves as Parisians - with all the ramifications associated. So sometimes it is considered not to be very polite to speak Shanghainess in the university, when there are fellow students from other provinces. Of course, if you can speak fluent Shanghainese, you may get a better price in local grocery or cloth stores. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5419 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 10 of 22 03 June 2011 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Shanghainese is phonetically hella hard to get a grasp of. I've listened to the ChinesePod lessons Ari was referring to earlier, and it was definitely not comparable to Mandarin or Cantonese. The lexical base is of course of the same origin, but even Mandarin speakers find it extremely hard to learn.
In certain senses it's not considered a tonal language, but this can make it even harder because there definitely is intonation involved in the speech for it to sound natural. If you'll be working with older natives, it wouldn't hurt to learn a few phrases. But otherwise, Mandarin will definitely take you further. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| audiophile Groupie United States Joined 5120 days ago 44 posts - 81 votes Studies: French | Message 11 of 22 03 June 2011 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe you can learn Mandarin, then pick up some passive understanding of Shanghainese
dialect? I don't think there is a textbook of Shanghainese that ever exists... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5419 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 12 of 22 03 June 2011 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, there are probably more resources for learning Shanghainese in Mandarin than in English anyway.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6586 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 13 of 22 03 June 2011 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
The same goes for all non-Mandarin Chinese languages. They say that to justify them not trying. People who say it's really hard to learn have never tried (I know that because nobody ever tries). In reality, it's probably one of the easiest languages in the world for a native Mandarin speaker. It took me about three months of study to get conversationally fluent in Cantonese, going from a solid knowledge of Mandarin. I'm nowhere near native fluency, but I'm light years ahead of most Mandarin speakers who have lived in Guangdong province for many years. Hearing them say that Cantonese is "too hard" makes me chuckle a bit. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5419 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 14 of 22 03 June 2011 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I find Shanghainese much, much harder than Cantonese. >_<
Then again, it's probably just because I've had much more exposure to the latter. I actually find Cantonese easier than Mandarin too, so maybe I'm just a little odd... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| audiophile Groupie United States Joined 5120 days ago 44 posts - 81 votes Studies: French | Message 15 of 22 09 June 2011 at 6:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Shanghainese is really a piece of cake for me. I just picked it up - no books, no
drills, no reviews, no effort, and will never ever forget, and always have a perfect pronunciation. So why everyone here thinks it is so difficult? I watched Prof Arguelles' struggle with Chinese with sympathy and admiration. But I now start to think maybe westerners have somehow been "formatted" with a Indo-European logic? Many people in China remain illiterate but speak perfect Chinese. So maybe that's the strategy you can use - instead of trying to memorize all the individual characters? A speak-only Chinese should be quite doable in my opinion. But on the other hand, the German grammar has driven me crazy. I cannot write any sentences correctly! Now I decide to give up and focus on one-way communication only (text reading and simple spoken phrases) and ignore all those complicated grammar rules. Of course, maybe that's because I was born in Shanghai, haha... Edited by audiophile on 09 June 2011 at 8:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6054 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 16 of 22 09 June 2011 at 8:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I have glanced over some Shanghainese materials and it also seems pretty easy to me (comparatively speaking and on a first impression). And Shanghainese materials do exist, you just have to look for them. I found mine in big bookstores in Shanghai. Edited by irrationale on 09 June 2011 at 8:51am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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