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This week’s Shanghai Friday phrase is once again from Tatoeba.
搿搭到哀面是老近个。
gəˀ tɑˀ tɔ ɛ mi zɿ lɔ ʥin gəˀ
从这儿到那儿是很近的。
In English it would be
It’s not far from here to there.
Note the use of 老 here sometimes written 佬. This is found in a number of Wu dialects in place of 很. And of course 个, long used in Wu where in Mandarin one would find 的.
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I wonder about the direction and time of influence on those. In Mandarin we also have (colloquially) 老漂亮, etc (老=很), and also 你妈个屄 which up here in the north is invariably 你妈的屄. I was shocked when I first heard the former because without knowing 个=的, it sounds like 妈 has more than one! I thought it was something along the lines of “rip you a new one”.
Can’t say I’ve heard 老漂亮 in Mandarin. And I often wondered about the 妈个屄 个. I don’t know enough about the historical changes to know if that’s contamination from one end or the other. Though, as many of the people who first started writing in the colloquial in Mandarin were from the Suzhou/Shanghai area, there’re a number of 吴isms in Mandarin. For one, it’s the reason we have 让 as a character as has been discussed here and elsewhere before.