And we have killed it.
With the talk I keep hearing in various circles about how Shanghainese is on the way out, I start thinking it may be true. But try telling that to the woman I met today. Couldn’t have been older than 50. Shanghai native. Allegedly works around here.
She was chilling in the lobby of my building talking to this guy I know. It sounded like she was teaching him some Shanghai hua. I say sounded because I was in another conversation so I wasn’t listening clearly but there was definitely some Wu going on. My conversation ended and after a lull in theirs I said to my friend “喏，侬讲上海闲话伐 / nɔ, noŋ kɑ̃ zɑ̃hɛ ɦɛɦo vɑˀ?” (Hey, you speak Shanghainese?)¹
It was really just to mess with him. Can of worms, because she immediately began speaking to me. What I didn’t realise is that she wasn’t trying to teach him Wu. She was just trying to communicate.
I spoke to her for a while, as long as I could, but she didn’t once get two consecutive sentences out in Mandarin. For much of the conversation I still thought she was trying to teach us, so I was all for it.
A bit later I was down there again and asked the desk worker aiyi who the woman was. We talked for a bit, and it turns out “她不会说普通话”²
I must say, I never get tired of the experience of meeting a Chinese person in China who can’t speak Mandarin. It never ceases to mess with those little lingering childhood ideas of what “China” is.
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¹ Actually what I said was more like “nɔ, nong gang sangheïa wu va?”, which is less elegant but was understood just fine. “Gang” is a Changzhou (and Qihai I think) thing that I’ll probably never shake.
² “She can’t speak Mandarin,” and also footnotes are sweet.
How can Shanghainese be on the way out?
The argument given is that since the young Shanghainese speakers are mostly speaking Mandarin these days and not wanting to speak Shanghainese, the native population will not really have so many speakers in another generation or two. I don’t know how much I believe it. It depends on the day I’m having.
that reminds me this article I read some months ago
http://sh.eastday.com/qtmt/20081202/u1a507195.html
We get plenty of people out here in Lijiang who couldn’t string a sentence together in mandarin for the life of them, especially when you get into the villages. What always amazes me is that these people still have access to television and a majority of what they watch is in standard mandarin…I know listening and speaking are two separate skills, but c’mon…
I knew a woman in Albania who only had Italian tv at her disposal. It was the mid-late ’90s so not really any other choice. She could understand a bit, as she watched a lot, but certainly couldn’t speak any.
interesting!Dialects having been vanishing is a common phenomenon since tne world is 大同 ing.