This is probably the first and last time I throw a full out Mandarin recording up here. It’s more for the accent anyway.

I spent the last year in Changzhou, a part of Jiangsu that In many cases hasn’t been fully penetrated by Mandarin. Despite it being 2009, there are a number of encounters one would have in that city and I’m sure many cities like it where Mandarin is of little use. This is especially true of conversations with the elderly, but much to my surprise, not just with the elderly. I’ve had more than one conversation where Wu was translated to Mandarin for me while my responses in Mandarin were left as is, i.e. the conversation was only half-translated. It’s forced my own speech into the softened realm of h-dropping, e.g. saying things like “Sanghai”, and probably ruined me forever regarding getting the hang of the Beijing dialect. But there are still plenty of times when the local accent still throws me off, as in the first recording below.

This is from a conversation that took place on the way to a university area in Shanghai. The clips have been edited, mostly to remove myself, so don’t expect the flow to be what it really would be. For anyone living in Shanghai, it will be immediately familiar. This is more for those outside of Jiangnan.

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　SJ:
　你在学校里教书的？
　nǐ zài xúexiào lǐ jiàoshū de?
　Are you a teacher at that school?

　Me:
　hmm?

　SJ:
　教书的…　这…　老书的？
　jiàoshū de… zhè… lǎoshī de?
　A teacher, er, do you teach?

I was baffled for a moment by the “jiao su de”. The exaggerated tones on lǎoshī were clearly an attempt to help me. I don’t know if this points to an awareness on his part of how he sounds or if he just thought I had embarrassingly poor Chinese. Both could be true.

For comparison, 老师 in Shanghainese is [lɔ²²sẓ⁴⁴]^† and 教师 is [ʨiɔ³³sẓ⁴⁴]. For the first one, think something 我 with an L in place of the W followed by 四 but all with different tones. Again this is Mandarin and he’s obviously not doing that. I think Jason nailed it. I was thinking it was 教师 but 教书 makes all the difference in the world.

The longer clip below is of less relevance to the Shanghai accent, but I might as well include it. I had said something about how students here are required to study English from an early age but in America we don’t really have it the same way.

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　SJ:
　现在提倡。
　xiànzài tíchàng.
　Now the government requires^‡ it.

　现我的儿子，这么小，八岁，学英语。
　wǒ de èrzi, zěnme xiǎo, bāsùi, xúe yīngyǔ.
　My son is, how old, 8 years old and he’s studying English.

　他们学英语对吧。
　tāmén xúe yīngyǔ dùiba.
　So they study English, right.

　和现在英语成通用语了呀，
　he xiànzài yīngyǔ chéng tōngyòng yǔ le ya,
　And now English has already become a common language.

　没办法。
　méi bànfǎ.
　So be it.

For the record I’m not a total jerk and was in fact responding to him and taking part in the conversation. I just don’t need to subject you to my crappy Mandarin so it’s been removed.

Apologies for the quality, as usual. It would have been awkward to attach my external microphone mid-conversation, again as usual. There were a few words that I couldn’t make sense of when I came back to the recording. Suggestions are welcome.

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† Alternatively transcribed as [lɔ22sɿ44] and [ʨiɔ33sɿ44] though it’s non-standard IPA
‡ Possibly should be ‘advocates’, but in truth it’s much more a requirement