Hat tip to John over at Sinosplice.
Liang Yiwen of Shanghai Daily recently wrote an article called In search of pure Shanghai dialect which is available to read online. Here’s a snippet:
ONCE Shanghai dialect was widely understood in the region and known for its rich idiomatic speech, its memorable slang. But now even local Huju Opera has trouble finding speakers of pure and coherent Shanghaihua. Liang Yiwen reports.
In a race against time to rescue fast-fading Shanghai dialect, the city is putting out the call for native speakers whose pure and idiomatic speech will be recorded and used for research, preservation and promotion activities.
Have a look.
Of course the whole idea of “pure dialect” is silly, and it was silly back in the days of dialectologists searching for the ideal Older Rural Male informant, but *especially* so in a vast and cosmopolitan city. The more mixed it is, the purer it gets.
Well of course. I kinda skipped over that.
I do like the idea of documenting it though and if that means trying to find a generation past’s speech i’m ok with that.