CNNGo has an article on Qian Nairong. He’s the go-to guy for Shanghainese. If you don’t know who he is by now, you haven’t been paying attention. It’s called Word wizard: The man bringing Shanghainese back to the people. From the article:

Professor Qian Nairong (钱乃荣) might appear to be like any other mild-mannered professor. But get him talking about his passion, Shanghainese, and it becomes obvious why he has become one of the city’s newest social heroes. His projects to promote the use of Shanghainese have made him a local legend: a comprehensive Shanghai dialect dictionary and a, excuse us, the, Shanghainese input method — think pinyin for Shanghai dialect. Not just for lingaphiles, these books are saving Shanghai’s native tongue, getting more and more Shanghai residents using their local language.

Thanks to Xindanwei’s Liu Yan for bringing this to my attention. Good timing considering I not three days prior bought copies of all of his books on the subject I didn’t already own.

My friend Jason brought this up at the chit-chat at Xindanwei yesterday, which he in turn heard from someone else. It seems the insult 十三点, common in Mandarin, is originally from Shanghainese. In Shanghainese it’s said zəˀ sɛ ti, pinyin “se sei di”. Sounds a lot like English “society,” which, as Jason brought up, is no accident. From some BSS somewhere:

Society ，由這個詞演变而来。開埠之初的上海，傳統的上海女人是看不慣那些在交際界（society) 混的女人。洋泾浜英語把這些女人混迹的地方稱為“society”。十三點由此也就慢慢地變成了罵女人的專用詞。往後，上海人就漸漸地淡忘了十三點的本來意思，會把十三與點分開，簡化地罵：“十三伐啦？”幹脆省略去了“點”。在今天，十三作為一個專門人的名詞，已經遠遠離開了它的原來的本意。罵誰都可以用“十三點”。

Long story short, in English, like in Mandarin, calling a woman a “society” girl was a way of calling them a prostitute. This carried over into the speech of the Shanghainese during the great foreign adventurer infestation of the 30s. 十三点 was just a convenient way of writing it in the Shanghai dialect. Eventually the original meaning was lost, though not the insulting nature. Now it’s common in all Wu dialects, and can be found in Mandarin as well, though certainly less frequently.

Just a quick reminder. I’ll be holding at talk at Xindanwei in Shanghain this Friday. Here’s the summary from their site:

吴语对大多说上海人来说占据了他们每日与家人, 朋友交流的很大一部分. 方言的未来怎样? 是否有保存的价值? 就保护方言来说,现在做了什么? 来自Sinoglot的Kellen Parker希望你5月28日下午4点半到新单位来参与讨论. 说出你对这个9千万人都在使用的语言怎么看. 讨论以英语的形式展开, 不过也可以使用中文参与其中.

The dialects of Wu are a big part of life for most native Shanghainese, used for day-to-day conversations with family and friends. But what does the future hold for the dialects? Is there value in preservation? What’s being done now to protect the language? Sinoglot’s Kellen Parker hopes you’ll come join the discussion at Xindanwei on Friday the 28th at 4:30. Come give your opinions and reflections on the language of 90 million people. The talk will be in English but feel free to participate in Chinese.

We’ll be talking about a range of topics, all tied to the Shanghainese dialects of Wu, including standardisation, cultural identity, efforts at preservation and efforts at obliteration, to name a few. I’ll be speaking mostly English but feel free to contribute in Mandarin and I’ll do my best to not embarrass myself.

Hope to see you there.

This is the text of an article from the 12th May 2010 edition of 新民晚报社区版, a free newspaper here in Shanghai. The article talks about some dialectal characters and ends with a quick history of the creation of 覅, the character corresponding to the Wu equivalent of “不要”. Translations are my own and approximate at best. If you read Mandarin I strongly suggest you stick to the 漢字 text.

《老上海话朆有“不”一个“覅”走遍苏杭》

　有了网络之后，语言更加丰富多彩了，在层出不穷的新词和新字中，有些是专门用来“缩写”的，“表”就是个挺好玩的字，这个字表示的是“不要”。汉字以前的注音法是“反切”，就是第一个字的声母和第二个字的韵母拼起来，拼出的音，就是这个字的读音。如果用“不要”两个字来拼（“要”是“啸”韵），拼出的就是“表”。

　With the advance of the internet, language has become more colourful. We’re seeing the outpouring of new words and new characters, many of which are meant as shortened forms¹. “Biao” 表 is one such playful example, intended to express “bu yao” 不要. In the past, Chinese character sounds were given in books using fanqie character pairs, where a first character gave the initial consonant of the syllable and a second gave the rest², thus providing the reading for the original character. If you use the two characters “bu yao” in this way (since “yao” is a -iao ending), the resulting sound is “biao”.

　这个“表”还真有地方方言中是表示“不要”的，这个地方离我们还不远———就是杭州，杭州人从来不说“不要玩”、“不要吃”，而是清脆的两个字“表玩”、“表吃”。

　Of course, here “biao” is really a dialectal word to express 不要 (bu yao). The place where this is used is not far from here, but is just Hangzhou. Hanzhou natives never say “bu yao wan”, “bu yao chi”, but rather “biao wan” and “biao chi”.

　然而，“表”终究是半开玩笑“发明”的，只表音，不能表意。不过，汉字中其实早就有这么一个字了———“嫑”，这可不是我造出来的，“嫑”在字典上都找得到。我一直觉得，和“不”搭配的字都很“牛”，“不正”就是“歪”，“不用”就是“甭”，而“不好”就是“孬”。

　The character 表 is here only half-jokingly repurposed. It’s only a phonetic representation, not an idiographic one. But there is a much earlier character for 不要, 嫑, which is not an invention of mine and can be found in many character dictionaries. I have always felt these 不 characters were pretty niu, for example 不正 as 歪, 不用 as 甭 and 不好 as 孬.

　有人要说了，讲了半天，到底要说什么啊？上海话中根本就没有“不”字。

　There is simply no 不 in Shanghainese. But then if someone were to wish to speak for a very long time, what should they say?

　上海话中有“不”字，比如“不锈钢”就是，但这个词可算作外来语；另外，上海话中有“不过”一词，可发音上已转为“毕过”。这样想来，上海话中好象真的没有“不”字，上海人在表达否定的意思时，用的是“勿”，这个字在上海话中发作介于普通话“佛”与“浮”的音，硬要用拼音标注，可以是“fé”。

　Shanghainese does have the character 不, for example in “stainless steel” (不锈钢, not-rust-steel), but this word entered Shanghainese from Mandarin. Otherwise, Shanghainese has 不过 (but), but it’s pronounced like “毕过”. So in this way, it seems Shanghainese really doesn’t really have the character 不. Instead, Shanghai locals express negation with 勿, the pronunciation of which is somewhere between Mandarin’s 佛 (fó) and 浮 (fé), which if spelled with pinyin would be “fé”.

　由于“直把杭州作汴州”的缘故，使得杭州方言里带有大量的北音，“嫑”就是其中一个，既然上海话中“不”为“勿”，那么只要用替代法，把“嫑”中的“不”改成“勿”就可以了。

　What’s more, as a result of the Song capital being moved from Kaifeng to Hangzhou³, the Hangzhou dialect has a large number of northern sounds. 嫑 is an example of one. And since Shanghainese uses 勿 instead of 不, we can substitute 勿 for 不 when used, thus changing the 不 in 嫑 to 勿.

　真的可以吗？答案是肯定的，这个字是“覅”，“不”果然变成了“勿”，只是从上面搬到了右边。这个字读啥？根据古文从右到左的习惯，这个字就是“勿要”，你用“反切法”试一下，对了，这个字就读作“fiào”，连字典上也是这么印的。

　Can we really do this? My answer is surely we can, and this character is 覅, 不 having been changed to 勿 and moving it from above to the side. How to read this character? According to classical reading or right-to-left, this character is 勿要. Try using the fanqie method. That’s right, it’s read “fiào”, and as such it is printed in character dictionaries.

　其实这个字是一个叫韩邦庆的人“发明”的。韩邦庆，上海人，他在1892年创办了中国的第一份小说期刊《海上奇书》，在这份期刊中，曾连载过一部叫做《海上花列传》的小说，在写《海上花列传》时，韩邦庆发明了“覅”。

　This character is actually an invention of Han Bangqing. A Shanghai local, Han Bangqing wrote China’s first periodical novel called A Remarkable Book of Shanghai. In it is a story called Flowers in Shanghai, in which Han Bangqing coined the character 覅.

　《海上花列传》发生在上海，其中的人物，有许多说苏州话，这也是为什么上海话含苏州音的一个实证，在苏州话里，就有这个“fiào”，《海上花列传》是用方言写的，于是韩邦庆“发明”了“覅”。

　Flowers in Shanghai takes place in Shanghai and has many characters speaking the Suzhou⁴ dialect. This is also evidence of why Shanghainese has many sounds similar to Suzhou dialect, and in Suzhou you’ll also hear “fiào”. Flowers in Shanghai is written in the vernacular, and for this reason Han Bangqing “invented” 覅.

　“不”有许多组合，“勿”居然也有，“朆”就是一个，这个字是“勿曾”、“还没有”之意，用“勿曾”反切一下，读作“分”。比如有人问吃过饭了没有，可以说“还朆吃来”。（梅玺阁）

　不 is used in many combinations, and therefore we can use 勿 in the same way. 朆 is another such character, coming from 勿曾 and meaning “to not have”. Using fanqie for 勿 and 曾, we read it as “fen”. So for example if someone asks you if you’ve eaten yet, you can respond “hai fen chi lai”, “I haven’t yet eaten”.

Right, so I kind of resent the tone of the article, but am happy to see these sorts of things get press all the same. However I can’t help but feel as though a child is performing a magic trick that we already know all to well, and we an audience held captive by the fact that it’s their freaking birthday.

It’s worth noting that the original author was Han Bangqing and not Eileen Chang 张爱玲 (or Lust, Caution fame) as is often thought. Ms Chang translated the text into Mandarin, and it’s from her Mandarin version that the English translation is taken from. She herself was Shanghainese, and you’ll find the language used in other works of hers, including a bit of dialogue in the movie version of Lust, Caution (色, 戒).

Thanks to Chen for bringing this to my attention.

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1. See this recent Language Log post for another example.
2. …tones included. If you’re not familiar with the system, go check it out.
3. I’ve linked the corresponding sentence in the Chinese text to an explanation of the line in quotes, which is a verse from a poem by Lin Sheng written during the Song Dynasty. Long story short, the author of this article is using it to explain that the capital of the Song moved from the North, brining with it northern sounds.
4. For a long time, up until only recently, the Suzhou dialect was the prestige dialect of Wu. For a parallel in English, think of stars of the silver screen speaking Mid-Atlantic English in decades past.