ChinesePod – Shanghainese haggling April 24 2010 2 comments

ChinesePod has their first Shanghainese dialogue up. I’m listening now. Not bad.

If you’re a registered user, go check it out. If you’re not, go sign up for your free week trial.

Good stuff, guys.

| posted on Saturday, April 24th, 2010 at 9:37 am. | comment feed | respond | trackback

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1. 

   

   Julen, April 28, 2010:

   I left this comment below on the Chinesepod forum but I guess it will be ignored in the 80+ thread. I would like to know your opinion about it:

   I was very surprised to see Chinesepod using those random characters to represent the sounds of Shanghainese.

   It is obvious that 便宜 or 一百 is always 便宜 or 一百, whether you pronounce it in Cantonese, Shanghainese or Hunanese. In fact, the pronunciation of these characters as we know them today in mandarin is not necessarily the most correct ones from a historical point of view, in many cases the original pronunciations may have been closer to some present day dialects.

   Sure enough, Shanghainese is a new language that combines various Wu dialects, so there is little written material in Shanghainese proper. But there is abundant literature written in Wu, and it obviously used the characters in their proper sense. To ignore this is to ignore the importance of characters in the culture and language of all Chinese – including the Wu speakers.

   
   
2. 

   

   Kellen, April 28, 2010:

   I’m going to make my response (or attempt at one) a new post. That way it might draw in more people and you’ll get more discussion going.

   edit: here’s the response post.

   
   

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