What's the language spoken in Shanghai?

What's the language spoken in Shanghai?

Any non-Shanghainese living in Shanghai, Laowai or Chinese, quickly realizes that mastering Mandarin is not enough to understand everything that is said in local conversations, whether in the street or office ... a lot of local exchanges often happening in Shanghainese.

A language in its own right ...

The dialect spoken in Shanghai is a form of northern Wu , and it is the most common form within this linguistic group. If we consider the Wu language as a whole, it should be noted that it is still spoken in a large part of Zhejiang Province, southern Jiangsu Province, as well as in small parts of the Anhui Provinces, from Jiangxi and Fujian. In 1991, more than 87 million speakers were registered, placing this language as the tenth spoken language in the world! At the scale of China, even with fourteen million people speaking Shanghain and nearly a hundred million speaking Wu, we still speak dialect!

The Shanghainese is therefore a well-identified language, and has only two tones - high and low, unlike Mandarin - four tones, and Cantonese - nine tones ...
In Shanghai few foreigners are able to master the Shanghainese, the Learning Mandarin alone requires enough energy to occupy a few years the motivated student - as is my case for example ... But the mastery of some basic terms of this "dialect" can greatly simplify many everyday situations and will impress any Shanghainese friend.

Some basic words

Hello: nón hô How are you? Non-hôva?/ I’m good, thank you. Ngû mhehô, jâja. Goodbye: tzêwe Please : chîn / thank you: jâja Sorry: têveqchi This one: êtzaq Here: êtaq / There: êmitaq What: sâ / How much ?: Cîdi? Yes: ê / no: véqzy, mmeq or vio Where is the toilet? : tsŷsuke leqla ralitaq? I do not know: tgû veq-xioteq English: inven / Do you speak English? : nón Ínven wêteq kân vá? I love you: ngû ê-nón.

1 iq / 2 liân / 3 se / 4 sŷ / 5 nĝ / 6 loq / 7 chiq / 8 paq / 9 cioê / 10 zeq / 20 gniê / 30 sezeq / 40 sŷzeq / 100 iqpaq.

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