Shanghai Fridays¹, a once weekly post featuring words and phrases from Shanghainese, is back. This time around we’re going for sentences instead of simple phrases, and to go one step further, each week we’ll look into the phrase itself including a breakdown of the words and some basic grammar. This may be much more useful than disconnected phrases or words, and a single sentence should provide more than four phrases in previous instalments would have.

For our first week back, we offer the following:

听是听得懂一眼眼，讲讲勿来个²。
tʰin zɿ tʰin təˀ toŋ iɪˀ ŋɛ ŋɛ, kɑ̃ kɑ̃ vəˀ lɛ gəˀ.

It means “I understand a little, but I can’t speak it,” referring to a spoken language. So, for example, if you were out and about in Shanghai and wanted to practice your Wu, this would be a good phrase to pull out when things got a little more involved than “侬好.”³

Let’s look at it closer. Some of this is what you’d expect from Mandarin.

听是　　　”listening is”

听得懂　　”I understand what I hear”, same as Mandarin.

一眼眼　　Here’s our first real difference. “iɪˀ ŋɛ ŋɛ” is acting as 一点点 would in
　　　　　Mandarin or 一啲啲 in Cantonese. You might also hear 一星星 or
　　　　　一咪咪, as well as just 一点点 where 点 is more like “ti”.

讲　　　　Simply “speaking” or “to speak”

讲勿来个　勿来 (or 弗来 or 否来) means “not coming,” meaning it’s not coming out
　　　　　of your mouth. 个 here is 的. In Mandarin we might be able to exchange
　　　　　this with 讲不来的, “unable to say” or more formally “That which is
　　　　　unable to be said”.

There’s certainly a more eloquent explanation of the above, though for now this should do.

Tones. The sentence with proper tones for each individual word would be

tʰin⁵³ zɿ²³ tʰin⁵³ təˀ⁵⁵ toŋ³⁴ iɪˀ⁵⁵ ŋɛ²³ ŋɛ²³，kɑ̃³⁴ kɑ̃³⁴ vəˀ¹² lɛ²³ gəˀ¹².

However after sandhi rules, it would probably be something more like this:

tʰin^H zɿ^M tʰin^M təˀ^M toŋ^M iɪˀ^M ŋɛ^M ŋɛ^L，kɑ̃^M kɑ̃^H vəˀ^M lɛ^M gəˀ^L

Here ^H corresponds to ⁵⁵, ^M to ³³ and ^ʟ to ²¹. Or, for a more visual representation, we could say⁴

tʰin zɿ tʰin təˀ toŋ iɪˀ ŋɛ ŋɛ，kɑ̃ kɑ̃ vəˀ lɛ gəˀ.

Click here for all previous editions.

Check back next week for another instalment of 星期沪 with a whole new sentence.

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¹ 星期沪 [ɕin ʥi ɦu] or actually it would probably be [li pɑ ɦu], were anyone to actually finish the phrase with “沪”.
² The sentence comes from Tatoeba.org using the Shanghainese phonetic corpus. Tatoeba has a continuously growing collection of sentences translated into Wu.
³ Nong hɔ, “hello”.
⁴ If this sort of representation seems useful, let me know and I’ll do it again next week.