I spent my Friday in Shanghai, something I’d like to do more often. Despite the bad weather I had a decent time and of course made time to hit up a bookstore. Since my trip wasn’t really for pleasure I didn’t have as much time I as I would have liked, and so I only really made it to one. It would have been two but Dragon Books in Cloud Nine was closed for renovation. Anyway, I asked around for books on 方言. Turns out that even in Shanghai you can really only get books on dialects for the dialect spoken in the city in which you’re shopping.
They had three things to offer. The first was 《解说上海话》which despite being pretty wasn’t really what i was looking for, though I may end up picking up next week when I’m back in town. The second was strictly audio, which while nice is also not what I was looking for. I already have one book that includes audio called Shanghai Dialect for Foreigners and was more interested in a character approach. The one I ended up picking up for the low price of 7RMB is called 《上海话 / 临时急需一句话》 and is part of a series covering a number of languages. Click here to see what it looks like. It’s really more of a phrasebook for Mandarin speakers than anything, but the thing it included which I like is a pseudo-pinyin as well as two sets of characters for each line. Well, three if you include the Mandarin. What you see is something like this:
| 时间，地点由您定。 | ||||||
| 辰 | 光， | 地 | 方 | 由 | 侬 | 定。 |
| seng | guang, | di | fang | you | nong | ding |
| 僧 | 光， | 抵 | 方 | 由 | 侬 | 顶。 |
That’s Mandarin on the first line, Wu (Shanghainese) on the second line, pronunciation on the third and then on the last line, the characters that would be used to more accurately show the pronunciation to a Mandarin speaker. I particularly like this book because it shows a fair set of substitution characers that would take the place of the Wu/Shanghainese characters. This is done to an extreme in some cases, for example 我 which should be read [ŋu] is transcribed in the substitute phonetic characters as 嗯‿无, 嗯 covering /ŋ/ and 无 as /u/. That’s 17 strokes for those playing at home. 18 if you include the liaison linking them together. Two strokes in IPA, again if if you’re counting. Here’s another example:
| 我想知道您对这个问题的看法 | ||||||||||||
| 我 | 想 | 晓 | 得 | 侬 | 对 | 搿 | 搿 | 问 | 题 | 搿 | 看 | 法 |
| ng ͡ wu | xiang | xiao | de | nong | dui | ge | ge | wen | di | ge | kui | fa |
| 嗯‿无 | 想 | 晓 | 得 | 侬 | 对 | 格 | 格 | 稳 | 滴 | 格 | 亏 | 发 |
The first few pages cover numbers and pronouns as well as some more common things, but then it jumps right into phrases. It was certainly worth the 7 kuai. The main drawback is that if you’re not already familiar with the sounds you should be making, it’s really not a whole lot better than online sources covering characters alone. That said, I think the inclusion of more than one set of characters more than makes up for it.
Back in Changzhou now. Leaving for the states in just a few days. More prolific posting to follow my return to Jiangsu.
Ah, I wish I had known you were coming here looking for Shanghainese materials… I have flirted with the idea of studying Shanghainese in the past, and have written about various books on several occasions.
Hey thanks. Actually it was through Sinosplice that I originally tracked down “Shanghai Dialect for Foreigners” a year or two ago, though I’d forgotten about it recently. Looks like I have a better shopping list for when I’m back next week.
Cool. I also have 上海话声调实验录 (I think I picked that up at 龙之梦). Not sure how useful it is, though. If you’re interested in meeting up while you’re in Shanghai next time, send me a direct message on Twitter or something!
I wonder what some combination of characters and IPA would be like. Something similar to hurigana in Japanese where the characters pronunciation is spelled out in small letters above it.
I realize the IPA of the word would be different from the character’s Mandarin reading, which may cause some confusion, but it would also help with learning to accurately pronounce the characters and be more like actually ‘reading’ Shanghainese.
Anyway, nice post and glad you didn’t miss your train!
I’ve thought a lot about this. Or, if not combining IPA with characters, then having a more simplified set. There’s just no reason for 豆 to be written with 斗 when the first covers the meaning and the sound and the tone just fine, and yet the above book does just that on a number of occasions. The problem is that characters wouldn’t be able to cover more than one dialect effectively. They will tell you in Changzhou that they never say 侬 (though I’ve heard it on more than one occasion). So then do I use 侬 for 上海话 but 你 for others (despite 你 not really covering the sound very well, at least in 常州话)?
The other way I’ve thought about doing it is that 我 could always be represented as 吾, 你 as 侬 and 不 as 弗 regardless of dialect. This would give a very general idea of the sounds, but then the reader could be referred to a key giving the proper pronunciation of each one in a given dialect. This would make the written Wu immediately distinguishable from Mandarin as well as maintaining some of the sounds and in many cases meanings. It wouldn’t work for everything, e.g. 什么 in Changzhou is 嗲 but in Shanghai is 啥, but I think for the most part it’d work out alright.