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In Shanghai, Shanghainese v. Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| chirish Newbie China Joined 4910 days ago 9 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English | Message 17 of 22 17 June 2011 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
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First, the differences of languages in different regions of China are so huge, and some times they should not be called an accent or dialect
I call languages of northen provinces are dialects of Mandarin, because they are similar with it, although some native speakers may have very strong accents, so that you cannot understand it very clearly. But for southern part of china, the pronounciations are usually very different with Mandarin, and also very different from place to place. So I think it is important to have a common language for most of the Chinese people. Chinese gov may be blamed for many things, but in language, I think it is not bad. Suppose I went to Shanghai with my native language, and my neibor speaks his native language, we cannot understand each other Thanks to Mandarin, although speaking Mandarin, shows we are foreiners (outlanders) If you learn native language, you'll lose a lot of chances to communicate with Chinese 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5084 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes  Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 18 of 22 19 June 2011 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | ||
This may be true, but I think there are definitely elements of the Chinese elite who want to see all the non-Mandarin Chinese languages disappear and that the Chinese state is not doing enough for their protection. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chirish Newbie China Joined 4910 days ago 9 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English | Message 19 of 22 22 June 2011 at 5:08am | IP Logged | ||
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There are different occasions how Chinese people learns Mandarin (listening and speaking)
I am about thirty years old. When I was in school about twenty years ago, we were taught Mandarin in classroom, especially YuWen lesson. But when not in classroom, we speak dialects or with accents So the words got from or listened from my parents, are ussually not Mandarin The older generations, for example, my parents, never learned Mandarin or less Mandarin in classroom, so some of them cannot speak it fluently, although understanding is not a problem Why new generations tend to speak Mandarin, not only in classroom? I think the reason may be people of such a big city Shanghai, are from different places all over China People tends not speaking dialect, even Shanghainese, because the people they are talking to may not understand that dialect So we all speak Mandarin, always, unless my parents comes. So the result at last is: the native language of our children is Mandarin, not a special dialect I think the dialect in small towns or cities is used much often, because there are very few people from other places 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 20 of 22 22 June 2011 at 7:18am | IP Logged | ||
For anyone interested in the status of the non-Mandarin Sintic languages, I highly recommend the 2003 article How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language by Victor Mair (of LanguageLog fame). It deals primarily with Taiwanese, but there's a lot of general discussion that applies to all the Sintic languages and he often draws parallels to Shanghainese, Hakka and Cantonese. There's also a very interesting section about how these languages came to be referred to as "dialects". The article is very well researched, though it is now eight years old and I don't know how much things have changed since then in Taiwan.
This makes me doubly sad, both for the special status you award Mandarin (it's not a dialect, whilst all the other Sintic languages are) and for what it says about how a huge portion of China's cultures are dying. To quote Mr. Mair's article: "forgetting one's mother tongue is the severest form of cultural amnesia". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chirish Newbie China Joined 4910 days ago 9 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English | Message 21 of 22 22 June 2011 at 10:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I am not a linguist, and am not willing to spend a lot of time on investigating on languages in China
But it may be true that dialects in big cities are usually not stronger than dialects in small towns or villages When I was in university, I found that students from villages or towns usually can speak their native dialect, while most people whose native language is Mandarin, are from cities Because cities in China are always crowded with people from different provinces, especially big cities This may have an influence on the survival of some dialects. For cities in a large province in which people speak similar dialect, that influence may be small If all people of Chengdu/Chongqing, Jinan/Qingdao, HangZhou/NingBo speaks Mandarin, the dialects in their provinces will still surive But for Shanghainese, it may be a pity. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lootrock Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5753 days ago 18 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Mandarin, Arabic (Egyptian), Russian | Message 22 of 22 22 June 2011 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's a very interesting article you've posted Ari, thanks. I had no idea dialects were stigmatized to that extent. To answer the OP's question, according to my shanghainese friend, she only speaks shanghainese with her parents and perhaps certain friends but she says even amongst other young shanghainese they may actually just speak mandarin. So in this regard, I wouldn't even worry about learning shanghainese; the importance seems to be very little in terms of practicality.
From what I've seen and heard of shanghainese, I don't think it would be terribly difficult to learn it if you have a good base in mandarin. I can already understand a little bit of it as a lot of the words have similar mandarin counterparts. Some of it just sounds like warped mandarin to me; very interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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