My typical day has recently involved a lot of time between busses and subways, with a taxi thrown in on either end. When I am walking, it’s usual at high speed in order to get somewhere before one office or another closes or goes on arbitrary lunch breaks. I decided to take my own and spend it in the park.
Near a map (which acted as my cover for standing there so long) but far from the cicadas a man and a woman were discussing something involving a great deal of pronouns. The two most common ones were
我 ŋu23 and
阿拉 ɑʔ33lɑʔ44.
我 is easy enough and corresponds to the Mandarin equivalent. 阿拉 can also mean 我 but otherwise means “we” or “us”. I’m not sure exactly when that’s the case. I’ve heard different explanations for it but none that have seemed to lock it down.
There’s also another option for 我们 which is 伲 ɲi23, also occurring as 我伲 ŋu23ɲi23, though I believe both of these are rather old and not widely used today.
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This first recording is from that conversation, though through my phone’s internal microphone things didn’t come out so clear. I really need to start carrying around my external earbud microphone. You’ll hear the man saying “na, na ge, aiyou…” followed by her saying over him “niu214” which he then repeats. Not sure what’s going on there but it’s not pronoun-based.
The second recording is one that was started far too late. It’s not at all Wu related but instead something I like about China. People sing. The same day an older man leisurely passed me on a bicycle, passionately singing something unfamiliar to me but quite beautiful. This is two women, walking with a man who you’ll hear jump in causing them to stop. They had been singing for a few minutes before but too far out to be heard well.
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Hehe, I always get a kick out of your guerrilla recordings. I tried to get my wife to listen to help you out, but she brushed it off with a 听不清楚. I think I’ll need professional quality recordings if I’m to enlist her help.
I don’t know if i can get you professional quality but i can certainly do better than that. I blame the pinhole microphone on my HTC.
Is 阿拉 roughly analogous to the 俺们 you hear up here in the north?
It’s used the same. I hadn’t thought about it before, having only come upon 俺 in online dictionaries and quickly forgetting it, but I wonder if there’s any etymological connection.
I should say I believe it’s used the same, since again I’ve not really had any experience with it off paper.
What is it in Suzhou or Ningbo? In Jinhua, they say a4lang2 now and according to Chao they said ŋa4lang2 in 1928. Cao Zhiyun uses the characters 我浪 — the 我 makes sense, but the 浪 is just phonetic, if I recall correctly.
In Lishui 丽水 they say wo44naing211 我人.
I’m not sure on Ningbo or Suzhou, having little experience with either of those. I know some displaced Nantongren who I could probably pester for it. Meanwhile I’m somewhat convinced that Suzhouren don’t bother moving to Shanghai, and I didn’t think to ask anyone when I was there the other day.
Though admittedly it’s of little value, In Wujin which falls into the Changzhou/Wuxi area it’s something like ɦɜɲʒhigh guneutral, specific tones unknown, and any book I have that would tell me is packed away in my old apartment in Changzhou for another couple weeks.
My friend just came by, a Nantongren, so I asked. 我们 is [ŋ55 li32]. That’s the Wu part of Nantong that’s fairly similar to Chongming Dao dialect.
Wow, I just found this blog and I’m amazed! We speak Shanghainese at home and I never realized that “ɑʔ33lɑʔ44″ doesn’t transcribe to the Mandarin 我们. I always thought it was some weird mutation of that phrase. Well, this explains a lot!