Today seems to be Shanghainese Saturday, at least from my end of things.

At LanguageLog, Victor Mair has a post up (A Potpourri of Materials on Shanghainese) which, among other things, has a great quote from a mother who is raising her daughter to understand and hopefully speak Shanghainese. I particularly like this part:

“I think the hardest part now for promoting Shanghainese is to let people understand that promoting a dialect is different from saying it (together with its culture and people) is superior than other dialects (and people and local cultures). Shanghainese and Shanghai people had such a bad reputation in the past (for which we only have ourselves to blame) that it is very difficult for people to distinguish these two separate issues.”

There’s also an interesting note on topolectal high school examination questions appearing here in China and a link to this site to inflate my ego just slightly.

Through a recent post on ChinaSmack I came across M and MX, a site with bilingual Chinese/English comics and, surprise surprise, Shanghainese podcasts. Click here for all the recordings. Check it out.

Then, prolific twitterer David Feng posted a link to a slightly odd cartoon in Shanghainese called 黑猫警长, Sergeant Black Cat. While not my typical form of evening entertainment, it’s good to see Wu in such form.

Finally, eChinaCities.com has a short article on Shanghainese called Nóng Hô! that includes a few common phrases and some great photos.

Thanks to Victor Mair and LanguageLog for the mention.