In a comment on the previously mentioned LanguageLog post, commenter Li Yu drops a link for the Wu Association (吴语协会). It’s a great resource and one I linked to for Chinese language pages on Wu. What I didn’t see before now was their downloadable Shanghainese dictionary. It’s available as a PDF, scanned from a text published by Jiaotong University in Shanghai. You can find it by clicking the link above and going to the download center (下载中心) or just get it directly here.

Another gem mentioned by Li Yu is the rather good attempt to come up with a uniform Romanization that would work for all Wu dialects. Each dialect page ends with the poem 咏鹅, “Goose Goose Goose”, by Luo Binwang (骆宾王). Figuring that since I have a native speaker handy, I decided to make a couple quick recordings of the poem. Here’s the Mandarin version:

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鹅鹅鹅，
   É é é,
曲项向天歌。
   Qū Xiàng xiàng tiān gē.
白毛浮绿水，
   Bái Máofú lǜ shuǐ,
红掌拨清波。
   Hóng zhǎng bō qīng bō.

Here is the Changzhou dialect version with transliteration provided by the Wu Association page:

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鹅鹅鹅，
   Ngou ngou ngou,
曲项向天歌。
   Chioh-ghan shian thie kou,
白毛浮绿水，
   Boh-mau vei loh-su,
红掌拨清波。
   Ghon-tsan peh tshin-pou.

I should mention that the speaker had some problems with how a couple things were transcribed, for example 歌 which has been written “kou” but she believes ought to be “gou”. For the record, she’s not from downtown but rather a suburb of a suburb (Wujin) and has a tiny but noticeable difference in her pronunciation. That said, I think she may be right.